


A royal tale

by MJ_Riedle



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Arranged Marriage, Crowley hoards the pronouns, Cultural Differences, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Graphic Depictions of Illness, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Original Character(s), Other, Self indulgent Fantasy, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn, Smut, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Trauma, Violence, What Is Gender?, no actual rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:00:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 59,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25943254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MJ_Riedle/pseuds/MJ_Riedle
Summary: Aziraphale is the Queen's only son and, even though he is aware of his duties and the realities of royal marriages, he still dreams of finding love in his future.Crowley is a royal bastard and terrified of the man she's supposed to produce an heir with.---He knew he ought to be grateful for the opportunity afforded to him not out of obligation but love and generosity. The moment he'd been old enough to understand the concept of marriage he'd also been made to understand that finding the right match, especially for royals, especially for the singular crown prince, unlike in the stories he loved to hear and read, was a financial, political, important decision made by others, for him. Being able to meet the potential candidates beforehand and to weigh in on the decision was more than many of his ancestors ever got.Still.Still...---There will be royal drama, magic, deep conversations, made up history, smut and, most importantly, love.Detailed content warnings in the chapters.Edit: Tags updated again
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 267
Kudos: 201





	1. A fate encounter

**Author's Note:**

> So...this is it, the very first chapter of the very first fic I ever actually wrote and published!
> 
> It turned out...long. I just started writing around noon and couldn't stop until it was all out. Hope you made it through anyways and I also hope my grammar and writing mistakes aren't too bad. Used the english spellcheck and everything but it's still just my second language.
> 
> If any of you more experienced writers could perhaps give me pointers in the comments on how to go about finding a beta reader, that'd be great. Is there a forum I should know about? Social media? Arcane rituals?
> 
> Either way, hope you had fun, I'm aiming for the second chapter to come out next week around sunday.  
> Bye!  
> This first chapter will not contain anything graphic but people will talk about selling and buying a person and underage pregnancy.
> 
> Enjoy!

It was a quiet night during what a very optimistic person might have called 'the very end of winter', when it tended to be just cold enough after sunset to put frost on every surface and just warm enough after sunrise to melt said frost again, resulting in muddy paths and fields and headaches for those who needed to travel across them.

The weather along the coast was calm and the skies were clear.

Had one been so inclined ( and wearing an appropriate coat), one might have been tempted to stay and take in natures vast and overwhelming beauty. 

The reflection of the crescent moon on the ocean. The glittery blue-black of the sky melting into the glittery blue-black of the sea – erasing the horizon, creating the illusion of infinity. The gentle murmurs of the waves far below the cliffs edge... 

Unfortunately, none of the passengers inside the rented coach fighting its way up the muddy clifftop path had much of a mind for aesthetics - two of them discussing their plans one last time and one staring...numbly...( _terrified_ , _caught_ , _caged_ ) into empty space. 

The grand hall was packed to bursting with people in their finest gowns, brightly illuminated, smelling of delicious food and badly disguised body odour. A group of musicians and hordes of servants made their best efforts to keep all the guests entertained and the guards sober. Dozens of nobles mingled with each other on the dance floor and used the occasion to make new connections while always, much to Aziraphale's dismay, keeping at least one eye open for a chance to catch up to him and his mother and impress them. 

“Oh, that is quite interesting.”, said mother lied.

They'd been talking to, or rather, been talked at by, the Countess such-and-such and her over eager daughter for what felt like an eternity. 

He did not really dislike her, either of them, personally. He didn't even know them enough to form any strong feelings towards them. They just happened to be the sixth...seventh? party that night to try and stand out as he one with the largest and most fertile lands, the largest and most fertile daughters, the most useful political relations and the grandfathers with the highest kill count. 

It was tiring.

And frustrating.

And his mother discreetly but firmly poked him in the ribs with her fan. 

“Yes!”, he said, trying to sound like he'd paid attention this whole time.

“Quite.”, he added for good measure. 

Apparently that answer sufficed (or likely never mattered in the first place) because the Countess immediately started up again, only to be interrupted by his mother. 

“It has been a pleasure meeting you both, truly, but the night only has so many hours and there are still so many guests we need to greet. You understand.” 

While the ladies failed to hide their disappointment at being sent away entirely, they both nonetheless curtsied politely and made their way back into the crowd. 

Aziraphale didn't even need to look to know about the disapproving glare being shot at him from behind his mother's fan. 

“I'm sorry, mother.”

“I hope so.”

“I-I just...I know this is important...”

“Then why don't you act like it?” 

They both spoke quietly enough not to be overheard by any of the guests but even so the emotion in her voice was obvious.

There was a strain in her voice that belied her frustration.

That belied her patience running out. 

He knew he ought to be grateful for the opportunity afforded to him not out of obligation but love and generosity. The moment he'd been old enough to understand the concept of marriage he'd also been made to understand that finding the right match, especially for royals, _especially for the singular crown prince_ , unlike in the stories he loved to hear and read, was a financial, political, important decision made by other for him. Being able to meet the potential candidates beforehand and to weigh in on the decision was more than many of his ancestors ever got. 

Still.

_Still..._

“I'm sorry...”

“I know.”

“Just-” 

“Your Majesty!” 

Another supposed noblewoman, a voluminous lady in slightly faded green, equally as voluminous dress, flanked by a young girl, approached them.

After shooting a last warning glance at her son, her Majesty turned to the newcomer and, after a moment's hesitation likely only notice by Aziraphale, put on a pleasant smile and greeted the other woman warmly. 

“Baroness Somersby! How good to see you. We were afraid you'd have trouble making it in time for the ball.” 

“Wouldn't miss it for the world, your Majesty. Your Highness.”

A curtsy for the queen and a polite nod in Aziraphales direction, answered in kind. 

“Ever since the invitation arrived my Bernadette hardly slept a wink, she was so excited to meet your son!” 

Deciding to appease his mother and show her that he really did take her generosity seriously, Aziraphale did his best to make polite conversation. 

“Oh, I'm hardly worth losing sleep over.”, he joked.

Looking around, he added, “And where might your Bernadette be?”

The Baroness put a hand on he shoulder of the girl by her side, who giggled bashfully and curtsied again and then alternated between looking on the floor and glancing up at him from under her lashes. 

Oh. 

“Oh.” 

Aziraphale opened his mouth.

Closed it again.

Struggled to find something polite to say. 

“She's...tiny.” 

At his side his mother unfolded her fan again to hide her scowl and in front of him Baroness Somersby beamed with pride. 

“Don't you worry your Highness, Bernadette'll be twelve years old this summer and all her sisters became women around that age. My Elisabeth had her first baby at fourteen! All the women in the family are fantastic birthers, always been.” 

The smile on Aziraphale's face, forced but polite all evening, froze. The silence in the group stretched long enough to become awkward. 

A warning whisper.

“Azir-”

“That's a literal child!”, he whispered back through clenched teeth.

“Be polite!”

“I can't marry a twelve year old, I'm twenty five.”

“ _Aziraphale.”_

_“Mother.”_

“Your Majesty.” 

For the second time that evening, what could have developed into a serious argument was interrupted by someone needing the Queen's attention. 

This time it happened to be her Majesty's maid in waiting, Madame Tracy, who, for some reason, had the uncanny ability to always show up out of nowhere, not so much being invisible but blending into the crowd, no matter how small or of what social status said crowd was, despite by no means being an unassuming woman. 

It startled Aziraphale at the best of times but now he was more than relieved to see her. 

The Madame had been in her Majesty's employ for as long as he could remember and the two had developed an almost instinctual understanding over the years, so much so that one look was enough to let the Queen know that whatever her maid had to say was important. 

“I'm afraid this conversation will have to be postponed, Baroness”, she said, giving her a nod and a wave, turning away without waiting for an answer. 

“Oh, ah, well...”

It looked as if the Baroness thought about saying more for a moment or two, but, seeing as her Majesty already held a whispered conversation with Madame Tracy and Aziraphale offered nothing more than an apologetic smile, she decided otherwise and left with another nod. 

Madame Tracy spoke quiet enough for him not to understand her, but Aziraphale saw his mother's face grow dark with...concern? Anger? 

“What? Are you sure?”

_Whispering. A short pause._

“Where did they come from?”

_Whispering._

“Do you know, what...?”

_Whispering. A thoughtful look._ Then:

“Where are they now?” _Whispering._

She straightened, her posture stiff, her expression tight.

Turning to her son, she said :

“Aziraphale, I have to take care of this. You. Behave.”

He nodded quickly and watched her leave through one of the side entrances. 

_One..._

_Two..._

_Three..._

Looking around, making sure no one was currently watching him, Aziraphale made his way to the side entrance on the opposite side of the hall, fast enough to look like he had somewhere to be, but trying very hard not to look suspicious.

It almost worked.

“Can I help you, your Highness?”

Of course Archer'd see him. _Of course._

“O-Oh. Captain. No, not really, but thank you.” 

He made to walk again, only to stop when Captain Archer kept up his pace beside him. 

“Can _I_ help _you_ , Captain ?” 

“Only doing my duty, your Highness. Or did you already have someone else assigned to escort you?”

“I-...no. Just, er, well, I don't really need an escort to go to the privy, now do I?” 

“One can never be careful enough when it comes to royal safety! Especially with the palace this busy.”, the Captain responded with one of his typical blinding (no doubt carefully rehearsed) smiles.

No matter how polite his words and despite the fact that they were about the same age, Aziraphale always felt like a child being talked down to by an adult when Archer spoke. It was maddening. 

“And I am confident no one will dare attack me on the way to the privy when there are so many witnesses nearby. Thank you, Captain.” 

He turned again. Stopped again.

“I said, 'Thank you, Captain.'” 

Even though Archer looked neither convinced nor happy, he let the situation be and Aziraphale finally made his way through the double doors, away from the people, away from the noise and the smells and into the silent, chilly night. 

She'd hoped that maybe, if the humans really hated them as much as she'd been told, that they would be turned away at the gates. 

They were not. 

Instead people had started running around, talking to other people, waiting for answers and eyeing them with suspicion, always keeping their ( _pain, poison, bad_ ) weapons at the ready. 

After a while someone with red curls (much wilder than hers but also pale in comparison) had appeared and lead them inside, into the building that was so much larger and more imposing than what she was used to, past so many doors, escorted by other humans with weapons, into a room with one big table cluttered with quills, ink pots and empty papers, surrounded by chairs. 

Now they were waiting. 

She was glad for the veil that covered her eyes. It kept the humans from seeing her fear.

They were nervous – she opened her mouth slightly, took a deep breath, rubbed her tongue on the roof of her mouth- scared even, from the smell of it.

Better let them be scared and think of her as a threat than let them know how terrifying she found them. 

She didn't know how long she stood there, in silence, grasping at the item in her hands like her life depended on it. Because her life did depend on it. 

The door opened. 

She stood with her back to it, so she could only hear it, smell it – the scrape of the metal handle mechanism, at least four pairs of feet entering, someone smelling of...anger?..., something like that. The door being pushed closed again, _no click_ – and then four people passed her, two guards, the redhead from before and- 

“Queen Marcella the Second. I guess we're supposed to be honoured to meet you in person.”, Hastur sneered. 

To his right Ligur gave a humourless huff. 

The Queen took a seat at the other side of the table, bringing the wood and iron monstrosity between them. Her face showed open disdain. 

“You can keep your jokes and your insults. I'm sure you want to get out of here just as much as I want to get rid of you. Why are you here?” 

Even though Hastur and Ligur looked calm, she'd known them for long enough to know their demeanor was forced. Every single person in the room was tense. 

The next one to speak up was Ligur. 

“We understand you are busy. Isn't there supposed to be some sort of ball today?” 

An exaggerated nod from Hastur answered the obviously rethorical question. 

“Yes, yes, a ball. For the princeling, I think, so he can finally find a wife. Isn't that right, your Majesty?” 

The Queen didn't even deign their little play with an answer, only waited for them to finish, her mouth a thin line, her posture rod straight and rigid. 

“Probably a lot of nobles here today, right? Nobles, rich people, royalty, to make some real, what do they call it, alliences? Political connections? Probably hoping for a princess so they can...keep the peace, I guess? Get some trade deals? Allies in war?” 

Ligur nodded, cradled his chin in his head, trying to look deep in thought but only managed to look ridiculous, and looked directly at her Majesty. 

“Would be a real happy coincidence if they managed to find the princess of a direct neighbour. A dangerous neighbour they have real difficult relationship with. Like, oh, I don't know, a Galdor princess, maybe.” 

“Enough!” 

The Queen's hand slammed on the tabletop in front of her and she shot up, hard enough to make the writing utensils scattered atop it shake and one or two guards startle.

“I will not be made a fool of by savages! There is no heir to the Galdor throne! Take whatever you were trying to trick me into taking off your dirty hands and leave my palace, leave my kingdom before I have you bound in iron and tossed into the sea!” 

_Yes, take me away from here. Let's leave, let's leave_! 

Despite being just as startled as the guards Hastur managed something like a grin. He took a step back and came to stand right beside her. 

“Did you hear that, Ligur? There is no heir to the Galdor throne. Hm...Then I wonder what this is...” 

Several things happened simultaniously: Hastur lifted her veil, revealing her eyes and birthmark to the room. The Queen gasped in shock, her ginger companion clasped her hand in front of her mouth. The guards, confused and worried by their Queen's reaction, readied their weapons. 

“What witchcraft is that? Explain yourself!” 

Ligur huffed again, honestly amused this time. 

“No witchraft necessary. Just a regular bastard.” 

This was it. She felt nauseaus. Her limbs were numb. She could feel her heartbeat in her throat. 

_If she managed to barf on the Queen, would the guards just kill her right away?_

Marcella closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before sitting back down. 

“...do they know?” 

“Your Majesty!” 

The pale ginger looked at her, shocked. The only response they got was a dismissive wave of a hand. 

“No one knows, except for the people in this very room. Although...”, Hastur dropped the veil again and took a step forward, “ there is a messenger who's been paid to deliver a certain letter to a certain place if we do not make it back to stop them before a certain time is up.” 

The tension in the room eased slightly as her Majesty leaned back in her chair and seemed to consider her options. 

“So you made sure to add security measures for yourselves. What about me? What kind of security do I have? I can't very well keep her in chains if I want to marry her to my son.”

Ligur shrugged.

"You could. But you wont have to. We wrapped her up all nice and tidy for you."

He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled back her sleeve far enough to show the thin leather strings that ran across her skin, each with a flat wooden bead that had a symbol carved into it's surface. Then he grabbed the item from her hand, leaving her feeling naked, stranded, helpless.

"And even if she somehow managed to get rid of those, you'll still have her dowry."

The Queen leaned forward, clearly intrigued, clearly considering, _was she really thinking about it, she couldn't-_

"And what excactly do you expect to get out of this deal?"

No. No no no no no, please no. This human wanted to buy her, she was about to be sold, to be bought, bound for the rest of her life, however long that would be and she had no way to escape.

Except.

Except there had been no click.

Except Hastur and Ligur stood with their backs towards her.

Except the guards were probably not as fast as her.

It was a quiet night during what Aziraphale might have called ' the very end of winter' if anyone had asked him and it was just cold enough to coat the pillars of the open gallery leading away from the palace interior and into the gardens with a thin layer of frost that would undoubtedly melt come morning.

The skies were clear and, despite not wearing a proper coat, Aziraphale could not resist staying out and taking in nature's vast and overwhelming beauty.

The cold night air made his breath foggy and watching the little white puffs disappear into the starry sky had a calming effect on him. He was just far enough from the grand hall that the music and the noise were nothing more than gentle murmurs in the background. The world felt peacefull and quiet...until some commotion off in the distance caught his attention.

Just as Aziraphale looked past his little hide away between the pillars, a running figure rounded the corner.

A...girl? A young woman in a simple dress and open sandals, with a veil covering the upper half of her face and a braided hairdo that looked to be falling apart.

She stopped as she saw Aziraphale, breathing heavily, looking back at where she'd come from, then at him, then back.

She looked scared.

Without thinking, he pointed into the corridor he'd come out of before.

"Hide, quick!"

A moment of hesitation. Then, she moved, running past him, in the direction he'd pointed at.

Aziraphale turned around again and a few seconds later several guards and two men he'd never seen before, one sickly pale and blonde, one taller than the other and with dark skin, came into view.

The blonde one spottet him, pointed a finger at him and yelled.

" You! Where is she!?"

Putting all of his ( very limited ) acting skills to work, Aziraphale pointed at himself, trying to look confused.

" Are you talking to me?"

" Of course I'm talking to you, who the fuck else could I be talking to? Where is she?"

"I'm terribly sorry, good man, but I'm afraid I haven't seen anyone until you came along. Perhaps whoever you are looking for went another way."

Shaking with rage, the stranger took a deep breath and, startig low and deep and becoming louder and higher pitched witch time, shouted:

**" CroooOOOOWLEEEYYY!!!"**

The other man let him have his short lived tantrum before he turned and beckoned all of them in the opposite direction.

Aziraphale waited for them to disappear before he let out the breath he'd been holding. He turned towards the corridor where the strange woman was probably hiding in the shadows.

Oh dear.

Oh goodness.

_What had he done?!_

He'd helped a complete stranger, a stranger wanted by the palace guard no less, hide.

She could be anyone! She could be anything! She could be a thief, a spy, an assassin!

Not really knowing what else to do, he slowly made his way toward her assumed hiding place.

He had to be careful, on guard, seeing as she could be dangerous. For all he knew she was probably armed, or waiting to ambush him, or...

Or cold.

And scared.

She sat, crouched, behind a pedestal holding a statue, her hands clasped tightly over her mouth, to stop any sounds from slipping out.

With the veil covering the upper half and the hands covering the lower half, her expression could not be seen but her whole body shook like a leaf.

Maybe helping her had been a spur of the moment decision that could turn out to be disastrous in the end but at this moment, all Aziraphale saw was a scared person in need of help.

So he crouched down, careful to move slowly and moved his hand where he assumed her line of sight to be.

"Hey."


	2. A deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, chapter 2, and it's technically still sunday!  
> I'm not really a 100% happy with how this turned out, but if I only published stuff if I was, I'd never get anything out. Gotta get over myself!
> 
> This chapter contains mentions of suicide and lots of talking.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid! She was a stupid fucking idiot! Yes, of course, let's try to escape the heavily guarded palace just because someone hadn't closed the door completely! Great idea! Not like she was bound or anything! Or like Marcella had her dowry and she was doomed anyway and they were going to find her and be angry and punish her and -_

„Hey.“

\---

He hadn't meant to startle her, her really hadn't.

Nonetheless, she still jumped upright when he addressed her and slid backwards along the wall, bringing as much space between them as possible in the narrow hallway.

Still, they were closer than before and the dim light of the oil lamps that were mounted on the walls every couple of steps allowed Aziraphale a better look at the stranger than before.*

She was tall, taller than him, and thin as a rail – even with her bodice laced up as tight as it would go her (dark grey, obviously old and, quite frankly, ugly) dress still hung loose on her frame. That veil she wore reminded him of a very simple, rather short mourning veil and while it hid her face to just below her nose, the skin underneath was pale, worryingly so. By now gravity had almost fully won over whatever had kept her hair up before and most of it was tangled around her shoulders. It was a dark red, almost oxblood colour Aziraphale'd never seen on anyone before.

She neither moved (aside from her shivering) nor spoke but stood tight and poised to run again at a moment's notice. Aziraphale slowly raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“Sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean – I mean I didn't want to, I, erm...Can I help you? Do you need help?”

There was no obvious response from the stranger, neither positive or negative. He decided to take that as a good sign and soldiered on.

“You must be terribly cold, poor dear. It's freezing out here and...and you're not even wearing socks? Did I see that right? Oh my. How about, uhm, how about I find you a nice warm blanket? And a hot mug of tea? That'll make you feel all better.”

“Why?”

Had the distant music been any louder, Aziraphale wouldn't have heard the stranger's almost whispered question. As it was, he had heard it and took it as a good sign.

“W-why? Oh,” his hands wandered, as they usually did, to fumble with the necklace he wore that night.

“Well, there's nothing better for a cold night than some hot tea! Especially with a bit of honey. The mug warms your hands and the tea-”

“Why would you help me?”

She spoke louder, this time, and her stance changed ever so slightly.

A little less on edge. A little more curious. Still ready to run.

It took Aziraphale a few seconds to come up with an answer.

“Because...it feels like the right thing to do? Because, no offense intended, you look like you need help. Do you not? Need it, I mean.”

\---

Part of her really wanted to take the offer.

They were right, she was cold. She was also scared and lost and the prospect of something, anything, warm sounded just about blissful at the moment.

The human appeared genuine enough, as far as she could tell. Nervous, yes, and a little confused but genuine.

It just...didn't feel right. To let them get involved.

Anything she did would just drag out the inevitable, wouldn't it? Hastur and Ligur would find her eventually, no matter what she did. It would probably be best if she just...surrendered herself to her fate. Get it over with, one way or another.

“You don't want to help me.”

They looked even more confused than before.

“I don't? Why not?”, they asked as they looked her over as if searching for something.

“Oh no, did you actually do something? Something bad? Did you hurt someone? Please don't say you hurt someone.”

Despite herself she felt a little fond for the human. She'd never met anyone so concerned with other people's well being. She'd never met anyone, really, but still, the point stood.

All the more important to get them to leave her alone then.

“It's not what I did, it's what I am.” she said and pulled on the string on the back of her head that kept her veil in place.

\---

Growing up, like any child, Aziraphale had been told about the magic people, the savages in the north and the fey folk. They mostly featured in cautionary tales about eating all your food and going to sleep, lest the faeries or the trolls or the galdor come and snatch the bad boy away to their cold, dark homes, never to return. Later, when he'd become old enough to read, the magic beings showed up in the fantastical tales of brave, legendary knights and clever heroes, as enemies and obstacles.

In those stories, they took many forms – giant and ugly, small and stout or even deceptively beautiful – but they always displayed some sign of their otherness. A hidden tail, perhaps, or teeth that were too sharp to be human, or well...yellow serpent eyes with slitted pupils.

“Ah, I see. So you're, “ not knowing what specific term was the right one here, he took a moment to find a polite expression, “not human.”

With her eyes on display her emotions were a lot easier to read than before.

The defiance and guardedness she'd assumed in her stance when taking off the veil were betrayed by the fear in her face. In the stories of his childhood the...non-human beings were either stupid and aggressive or clever and manipulative.

Not cautious and afraid. Not in need.

They both stared at each other for several moments in tense, awkward silence, neither really knowing what to do. Until a thought occurred to Aziraphale.

“So, if you're one of, erm, your people, couldn't you just, oh, I don't know, turn into...into a bird, for example and just fly away? Wouldn't that be easier than running?”

Again, her eyes gave her away because they showed genuine surprise at the question for a few seconds before she managed to hide her reaction with a scowl.

“ 'Course I could just turn into a bird! That's easy, turning into birds. Could turn into two birds if I wanted, just like “, a snap of her fingers, “just like that. Easy.”

“So you _can't_ turn into a bird, huh?”

“Can't turn into anything right now.”, she admitted with a pout and, seeing his questioning look, lifted her left hand and pulled back the sleeve to reveal the thin leather bands underneath.

“M'bound. Can't get them off myself, can't do shit with them on.”

“Oh. Then why don't I just-” Not really thinking (again), Aziraphale stepped forward to help with her predicament, only for her to snatch both her arms closely to herself and retreat again.

“What are you doing?”

“Uhm, helping?”

“You can't help me!”

“Why not? What happens if I try?”

“Wh- ng, I-I don't know. Something.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“Well, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to teach the person you're binding all about how it works, would it? And even if you somehow could get rid of them, it wouldn't make any fucking difference, 'cause I'd still be stuck here and there's nothing you or I can do about it, so would you kindly get off my back before Hastur and Ligur find me and you get caught up shit that has nothing to do with you?”

It was obvious she was trying to look angry but the wet shine in her eyes and the wobble of her chin said otherwise, so Aziraphale tried again, gentler this time.

“Look, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry. I'm sure if we think about this calmly, we can find a way to solve this problem for you.”

“You don't want to-”

“Would you please stop telling me what I do and don't want to do? What I want is to help, so please work with me here.”

A moment of contemplative silence and a (badly) concealed sniffle passed between them and then she relented.

“Fine. You want to help, I'll let you. Fine by me. That chain, “ she pointed at his neck, “is that silver?”

He nodded.

“Give it to me.”

“Oh, alright. If you say so. But if it's money you need I could just give you money instead...”

Without hesitation, Aziraphale took off his jewelry and was just about to hand it over, when a thought occurred to him. His hand stilled and instead of dropping the chain into her waiting hand, he clenched it tighter.

“It's just...I've never met someone like you before so I'm not sure if...Well, in the stories I've heard, the fey and all the other magic beings can't really touch silver, or iron, or any other metal because it burns them. Is that...it's not true, is it?”

She only looked at the hand holding the chain. Made a grabbing motion with her fingers.

“It's not true, is it?”

“Doesn't matter.”

Slowly, he pulled his hand back.

“Why do you want it?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“Why do you want something that hurts you?”

Still not looking at him, she hugged her arms around herself.

“Look, I can't let them find me, but I also can't get out of here. So that leaves me with one option.”

She shrugged with forced nonchalance.

“If I'm lucky it'll be quick. I don't know. Never swallowed silver before.”

The horror of what he'd almost assisted in hit Aziraphale like a brick.

“You can't do that. _I_ can't do that.”

“You said-”

“I know what I said.”

“I told you-”

“I know! And I do still want to help, but there has to be something I can do for you that's not so- so final.”

Again with the shrug.

“There isn't.”

“There must be! If you just explained to me what's going on, I could...we could...,”, he drifted off, lost in thought,

“We could make a deal.”

At that, she finally looked up again.

“A deal?”

“Yes. Let's make a deal. I'll give you this necklace – as many necklaces as you want- if you trust me just long enough to explain your situation to me and give me an honest chance to come up with something. How about that?”

When she hesitated he held out his hand, close enough for her to grasp but not so close as to invade her space.

“Seems to me like you have nothing to lose. Please.”

Although she refused to break up her hug with herself she nodded.

“Fine. But if they find us before you came up with something I get it anyway.”

“Alright.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. The most important thing at that moment was to get them inside, out of the cold and away from prying eyes to give them the time they needed to make the right decision. Easy as pie.

Aziraphale nodded for the woman to follow him and moved further into the hallway.

She stayed put.

“Where are you going?”

“Inside. It's a lot warmer and we can hide in one of the empty guest rooms.”

“But what about the guards?”

He shook his head and smiled.

“We don't have to worry about that. Smith and Bellows are on duty tonight and by now they're usually stuck gossipping with the women in the wash kitchens.”

As a little boy without friends Aziraphale had spent a lot of time wandering the palace and watching the servants. It came in handy whenever he wanted to do some late night reading or get a breath of fresh air without having to put up with other people or explain himself, so over time, he'd made a habit of memorizing the shifts. He'd never expected to use his knowledge like this, though.

Understandibly pensive she followed him.

Luckily, Smith and Bellows proved themselves to be reliably unreliable, so when the two of them reached the door that lead inside the palace proper, noone was there to stop them.

Through the hallways he could navigate even in pitch darkness he made his, or rather, their way, to the nearest room he knew to be empty. It was one of the simpler rooms, meant to hold traveling merchants or scholars rather than nobles. As such, it was currently dark except for the little moonlight that filtered in through the glass window and held a bed with a bare mattress, a table, stool and a wardrobe.

Immediatly upon entering Aziraphale made his way to said wardrobe and pulled out the blanket stored within to hand to...to...

“I don't even know your name yet.”

“You do.”, she replied as she took the offered blanket. “Hastur said it loud enough.”

“Ah, so that was that. Crawly, right?”

“Crowley.”

“Alright.”

He patiently waited for her – for Crowley- to wrap herself in the dusty blanket and chose a place to sit, before saying anything.

When she chose the stool (and sat in a way that allowed her to keep her eyes on both the door and him), Aziraphale sat on the bed.

“So, Crowley...what brings you here?”

Cringing internally with how awkward his words sounded, he started fumbling with a loose string on the mattress while waiting for Crowley to gather her thoughts enough to answer.

“I'm, uh...Hastur and Ligur, they – you've probably seen them- they brought me here to...well...”

He could hear her swallowed thickly and thought he saw her steal a glance in his direction while he did his level best to keep his expression as calm as possible. When he simply gave a little nod to show that he was listening, she continued.

“They are going to sell me to the Queen. Maybe already did, I don't know.”

“But, “, Aziraphale couldn't help but interrupt at this, “ slave trade is illegal here. And even if it wasn't, why would mo-her Majesty want to buy fey folk?”

If she noticed his little hiccup, she didn't show it. Mentioning his status would propably make this whole conversation more complicated than it needed to be so he thought it best to keep it to himself.

“I'm not fey, I'm galdor.”

“They're not the same?” “No...?”

“Oh. What's the difference?”

“I don't know...Doesn't matter, anyway. All I know is that I'm galdor and that their kingdom and this kingdom share a border. And that there's tension. That's why the Queen would want to buy me.”

“What do you have to do with tension at the border?”

She took a deep breath in, held it for two, three seconds and released before she answered.

“I'm the bastard of Prince Samael of Galdor. If the Queen married me to her son and I produced an heir, the two royal families would become related. Would be a great bargaining tool.”

In the shadows of the twilit room Aziraphale forgot how to breath.

*On a normal night the permanent lighting of a hallway as sparsely used as this one would have been considered wasteful. It still was, very much so, but apparently wastefulness was to be expected at the royal palace when hosting a ball. Something about proving one's wealth. Why one would want to appear bad at managing resources to impress others was still a mystery to Aziraphale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big, big, big thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos! You made me so happy. I hope you liked this chapter and I also hope I'll be able to keep up this pace - next week is going to be busy with work and other commitments, so I really can't make any promises, especially if I want to have it proofread before I upload.
> 
> P.S. Is it weird that I respond to every comment? Don't want to make folks uncomfortable, so please tell me if it is/ I do.


	3. A request

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonists come to a conclusion.

So much for his status making things more complicated.

Of course, Aziraphale’d imagined all the worst case scenarios concerning his future wife before, he barely went a day without imagining the worst case for anything.

What if she were to be cruel? If she were to be dull and stupid? If she were to find him ugly? What if she were to be from some foreign country and they couldn’t even understand each other?

What if all of it?

But even then, in all his wildest, most pessimistic nightmares, he had never come so far to even think of the possibility that someone might be so averse to the idea of marrying him, so averse to  _him_ , that they would literally rather choose to…that they would rather choose very drastic measures.

He was so lost in his own thoughts for a while that when she spoke up again, her strained voice actually startled him.

„So, yeah…Told’ya you can’t help. Now pay up. “

„But why? “

„Because we made a deal. “

„No, I mean,“ he stood up, saw Crowley flinch, realized his mistake and hurriedly sat down again,

„I mean, I understand you’re, erm, not here on your own terms, so to speak. But if - and that is a very big ‚if‘ - if her Majesty decided to agree to your…“ he looked in her direction, making a vague gesture with his left hand, waiting for her to fill the stretched out r-sound with the correct term and then gave up when she only stared back, blankly, „captors‘…? Your captors’ proposition – you’d marry into royalty. Is that really such a bad thing? “

It was hard to tell in the dim moonlight but Aziraphale thought he could see her eyes grow owlishly large and her mouth dropping open for a moment or two before she caught herself.

„ _Oh, well, when you say it like that_ – of course it’s a bad thing! Getting married off to an _oathbreaker,_ of all people and spending who-knows-how-long I have left surrounded by, by … all of your people’s weird, m-metal stuff and - and _monsters_ that hate me until he- until…until it’s time to have his children…yeah, tha-…that’s a bad thing.“

With every word, her voice became a little more brittle and in the end, she turned away, presumably so as not to let Aziraphale see her face.

It broke his heart.

This whole chance meeting, whether fortunate or unfortunate he could not yet tell, broke his heart in new and different and worse places every few minutes. He’d met strangers he’d wanted to help, even despite better judgement, before; that ache was somewhat familiar.

Knowing, with absolute certainty, that someone else was about to come to (very direct, very severe) harm if he didn’t do anything? That was new. Of course, he knew that his mother was not immortal and that he would, inevitably, someday be King and that he would, also inevitably, have to make decisions with…consequences. However, up until very, very recently, he’d been content with not really thinking about that yet. There were always so many other things to worry endlessly about.

In that same vein, the vague knowledge that his being the Crown Prince existed in other people’s minds entirely separately from him, Aziraphale, the person? That people could come to have feelings attached to the Crown Prince, that there were people out there who revered him, or loved him, or hated him or even  _feared_ _him_ ? That was a big, terrifying thought that opened up the possibilities for many other, slightly less big but still scary ones and he always kept well clear of it, making a wide, wide berth around the wild mother sow in the forest of his thoughts.

Until that sow snuck up on him, as they were wont to do, or so he’d read.

It was a terrible, hopeless and helpless, feeling. One he felt all too often and which he could not stand. So he decided to do something. Whatever that something would turn out to be in the end.

He got up, slowly, this time, mindful of his jumpy guest, and crossed the few steps it took to get to the small table she sat at. Keeping the balance between getting closer and staying at a non-threatening distance was difficult, but he hoped he managed.

“Look, “he said softly,

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry. It was a stupid question.”

“Yeah, no shit.” she answered, still turned away. But she answered. That was good.

Deep breath. Moving on.

“Yes. But, for what it’s worth, I still think I can help you. Now more than before.”

Crowley did not answer, either verbally or otherwise. It seemed, in fact, from how still and stock stiff she was, that not giving any kind of reaction or indication of her feelings on the matter was a conscious effort.

Weird, how, after experiencing something only once or twice, one could come to hate it.

“I may not know how to free you, but I could…I could buy you some time, perhaps? Before any ceremonies were to happen? Some weeks, I suppose, maybe even months. That should be enough for you to make plans and maybe contact people or maybe even free yourself…”

Aziraphale was definitely not thinking of the wider implications of his statements. He was not thinking about what it would mean to house the bastard Princess of a kingdom he knew nothing about against her will and to aid her in returning to said kingdom and thereby maybe even preventing his own future wedding against better judgement (and probably his mother’s will) and how that might be treason, based on nothing but the vague feeling that that was the right thing to do. Not thinking about it. Not becoming increasingly panicked. At all.

Somewhere in the definitely not panic he heard Crowley say something.

“I’m sorry, what?”

She turned her head a little more, facing him fully and repeated:

“I said: ‘How would you even do that?’”

That was better. Something to hold on to. Talking through the chaos in his head.

“Oh, well, weddings are big events. There’d be a lot planning and preparing to do if mother really decided to have you marry me. The guest list, sending out the invitations, planning the reception, the ceremony, planning accommodations for all the guests, that alone would take weeks. Besides that, you are a foreigner, right, so you’d have to be taught about our culture before you could be officially presented, so depending on how you do, you might be able to draw that out as well-“

“Did you say mother?”

This time, Aziraphale was the one to freeze.

“Did I?”

Opposite him, without breaking her gaze, Crowley slowly rose. She paid no mind to the stool behind her falling and the muffled thud it produced on the carpet. Standing straight, she was, again, taller than Aziraphale.

“So…you are Prince Aziraphale, then?”

Her voice was low and almost toneless. He only nodded.

They stood across from each other in the dark, simply staring, waiting, for several long, long moments. Before, the tension in the room had been a fragile thing, like a precious wine glass, or the hair thin layer of ice that would surely lie upon every puddle in the morning. From the feeling of it, the revelation of his ancestry had broken that glass and transformed it into sharp shards that would cut, indiscriminately, if either of them made the wrong move from that point on. So they stood, in silence, each deliberating on the best thing to do and waiting for the other to act first.

In the end, Crowley made the first move.

“I think I could strangle you, if I really tried.”

“I don’t doubt that. I also don’t doubt that it would exchange your current predicament with an exciting new one. Maybe even start a war, depending on how strong your claim to your lineage is.”

He swallowed, took a deep breath and continued, “Trying my approach first is probably more beneficial to us both.”

“Why, so you can trick me? I know you –“

“You _don’t_ know me –“

“ – you people are liars!”

“You’ve trusted me so far, haven’t you? And now you’re alive and unharmed and warm – sounds good to me! Sounds like, maybe, trusting me was a good choice! And just so you know,” he added, leaning forward and supporting himself with his hands on the table,

“I’m not particularly excited by the prospect of having a wife who’d rather resort to murder than having to endure being with me, either!”

With that, Aziraphale pushed himself up from the table again and fished the silver necklace out from where he’d stuffed it into his sleeve before. He tried to ignore the pang of guilt he felt when the noise of the chain hitting the wood made Crowley flinch.

“You either work with me or you don’t. Your decision.”

He regretted his words almost immediately. Had he been too harsh? Too threatening? Was he about to witness something horrible?

Instead of taking the necklace, though, Crowley just…deflated. She sunk back onto her chair, shoulders hunched and head bowed, a picture of defeat. A new breaking point on Aziraphale’s heart.

“Look at it this way,” he tried, gently, soothingly, this time.

“There’s a good chance we’re both making something out of nothing. You are a bastard, after all. If your father just denies you, even mother can do nothing about it. So…”

“That’s not how it works.” came the whispered reply. She pointed to something on her right temple that Aziraphale could not quite make out in the dim light.

“I have the birthmark. No one can deny my family ties.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“So that means…”

“I’ll work with you.”

She straightened out again and looked up.

“You help me get my dowry back and give me some time and I play along. Then I escape and you marry some pretty, human woman. No one gets hurt. Everyone gets what they want.”

“Yes. Sure. Everyone gets what they want.”

\- - -

They shook hands, wrapped the silver chain neatly in a clean handkerchief and left their little hiding place. Finding a guard was easy enough, convincing them to, firstly, not apprehend Crowley on the spot and, secondly, listen, was a little more difficult. It worked out, though and soon the two of them were escorted to the conference room where her Majesty with Madame Tracy as well as Hastur and Ligur were already waiting for them.

As soon as they were through the door, a guard took up the spot directly in front of it.

Aziraphale stood in the middle of the room, right across his mother, with Hastur and Ligur to his right and Crowley slightly behind him to his left.

“Aziraphale,”her Majesty began, not even trying to hide her bad mood.

“Mother,” he replied, trying very hard to hide his nerves.

“Why are you not at the ball where I told you to be?”

“Err…”

Right. The blasted ball. He’d managed to more or less completely forget about that.

“Erm, well, you see, funny story, actually…”

One of Queen Marcella’s most prominent features was her piercing stare. One could practically feel it burn on one’s skin, even (or maybe especially) if one was her son and fiddled nervously with ones sleeves while trying to look innocent.

“See, I was at the ball, and, erh, then I just had to, had to step out for a moment to catch my breath, as it were, and -”

“No one gives a shit!” Hastur shouted from the sidelines.

Instinctively, Aziraphale stepped further between him and Crowley.

“I don't care what's going on between you and brat, Marcella! Do you want the bastard or not?”

Before her Majesty managed to answer, Aziraphale spoke up.

“I have a request for that!”

Every single pair of eyes in the room turned, first to him, then to his mother. She let them all wait for several heartbeats before giving a gesture for him to continue.

“Right, well...I-We, that is, Crowley and me, we met, outside and had a, um, talk, I think is the best word for it. So I know why she's here and who she is and I... mother, if you intend for her to be my bride I would ask for her dowry to be returned to her. Immediately.”

Marcella leaned back in her chair and regarded her son thoughtfully. Then, she picked up a small, blood red apple that sat on the table before her (and that Aziraphale had, before then, not even noticed ).

“Do you mean this?”

...Did he? He looked back at Crowley, who nodded quickly.

To the left, Ligur laughed.

“You're a fucking idiot, boy. You don't even know what that is, do you?”

When Aziraphale didn't dispute that claim, he continued.

“It's a part of Crowley. We took it out of her and she can't leave the area around it. If you give it back to her, she'll be gone faster than you can blink.”

Again, Aziraphale looked back at Crowley and, this time, found her eyes wide and scared. He turned back and steeled himself.

“Keeping my future wife imprisoned is out of the question. She promised she'll stay and I trust her to keep that promise.”

“That girl is not some fairytale princess you can save, you dumbass. She's a Galdor bastard. A serpent.”

“I'd rather marry a serpent than a slave!” Aziraphale responded, louder and with more emphasis than intended. It surprised himself and seemed to also surprise his mother, who took a moment to collect herself and then got up.

“I don't need magic tricks to control my subjects.” she said, looking her son straight in the eyes.

“My maid will arrange for you to receive your payment. I want you out of here before the hour is up. Now, take your precious apple.”

The last sentence was addressed at Crowley, who instantly rushed past Aziraphale and started devouring the little fruit.

As she bit into it dark red liquid spilled out and ran down her chin, dripping down to stain her dress.

Marcella walked around the table to stand beside Aziraphale and in the commotion of everyone getting ready to attend to different matters only he heard her say:

“I hope you are ready to face the consequences of your request.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As expected, this one took a little longer. I'll try to get into a more regular schedule. The next chapter will bring us some more characters and more background info!
> 
> P.S. Vin, could you follow me back on tumblr, so I can message you with the links? Im "kissmeimconfused"


	4. A new day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a geographic overview and Crowleys' first morning in the palace.

Far above the commotion on the ground, unnoticed by most and uncaring in turn, the first silver beak cranes returned from their winter habitats. Known by experts for their titular silver beaks (they were light grey, in reality, but calling them silver made them sound more regal and important) and their habit of migrating dangerously late in winter and appallingly early in spring, these cranes were the ’guy-who-runs-two-miles-before-breakfast’ of the avian world.

If one were to have seen the world through their eyes - the famed birds’ eye view, if you will – one would probably not have seen much of interest at all on account of cranes having priorities that do not lend themselves well to creative writing.

If one were to imagine, however, a particular specimen with an unusual love for geography, seeing through their eyes might have provided some valuable information.

Flying high, higher than any member of their species ever had before, the crane would have been able to make out the contours of a continent. Said continent was rather more wide than tall with a dip around the middle, giving it the shape of a flat ‘u’.

Losing altitude to join their flock again, the geographer crane might not have been able to see as wide as before but the lost scope would’ve been more than made up for by the newfound detail.

At the very west of the continent a peninsular landmass held on, connected to its’ eastern neighbour by a mountain range. The land described a sort of crescent shape, as if simultaneously stretching to stay as far away as possible from the continent and itself.

The northern arm of the crescent was broken up into several large and small pieces, separated by rivers and growing bigger and more solid towards the middle of the land. There, the countryside was dominated by the foothills of the aforementioned mountain range, interspersed with dense forests, until it tapered off into the Kingdom of Sulvany.

That was as far as any bird, unusually educated or not, could be expected to care, so none of the silver beak cranes knew that Queen Marcella the Third ruled over Sulvany and had been ruling for close to 26 years.

They also didn’t know that Marcella had moved her entire household and, with that, in effect, the government, permanently into Fellwind Palace at the beginning of her reign, turning the relatively small (when compared to other important cities) coastal city of Bluharbor at the southernmost point of the kingdom into the capital overnight.

What they did know, however, was that they liked the land surrounding the palace.

Down on sea level a small fishing harbour had grown into a city that was only accessible either by boat or by the path winding down from the cliffs where the royal estate sat.

Having been built as more of a holiday retreat than a permanent seat of power Fellwind Palace had been ill equipped to maintain as many people for as long a time as lived in it, currently. So, over time, staff housing, several stables, gardens and orchards had been added, making the buildings burst out of the originally intended perimeters and necessitating several newer sections of walls to be added.

As a result, when approaching from the seaward side the royal home still looked as regal and impressive as ever, bright white and silver, two stories high, with the eastern and western wing framing an opulent garden and surrounded by a pristine whitewashed wall.

When approaching from the landward side, however, one might have gotten the impression of having walked into a curiously well-guarded village.

Around and north of that, the area was grassland, only occasionally interrupted by small gatherings of trees and the odd farm.

In the eastern wing of the palace, where the royal chambers, the Queens’ personal library and other assorted rooms of great import lay, a rather tired Madame Tracy was busy preparing a rather tired Marcella for her day.

Even though the night before had been way too long, what with having to officially end the ball, seeing off the guests and making the necessary arrangements for the new…guest…Her Majesty nonetheless needed to be up close to sunrise.

Expectation demanded her hair and clothing to be elaborate and perfect. The royal council demanded her to be well informed and on top of current events. Her own standards demanded her not to postpone anything just because she was tired.

So Marcella sat, her back ramrod straight as always, in front of her dressing table, while Madame Tracy braided her golden hair.

“You’re so quiet,” she said eventually.

The other woman took a few seconds to answer.

“I’m thinking, Your Grace.”

“Pray tell.”

Another few seconds passed while she finished a braid and tucked it into place.

“I’m…worried.”

When Madame Tracy looked up, she saw her Queen in the mirror catching her gaze and raising her eyebrows in question. She looked down again, freed and re-pinned the braids.

“It just seems so very convenient, doesn’t it? That there just happens to be a secret, female bastard in the right age for your son. That these men no one’s ever heard of have her and are willing to part with her for money. Not just willing – bringing her here to present her to you! I just…I fail to see anything but clumsily laid bait in that.”

She kept her eyes on her work while she spoke and did not look up after. While they usually spoke more directly and openly than would be appropriate for their stations (25 years of close proximity happened to be a great social abrasive), she barely ever came this close to calling her boss stupid to her face. Or back of the head, as it were.

Marcella, thankfully, appeared to take it in stride.

“Have you ever known me to be foolish, Tracy?” she asked eventually.

“No, Your Grace. Which is why I don’t understand.”

The Queens’ shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.

“Were they people of this or any other foreign kingdom, I’d feel the same as you. But they’re not. They’re witchfolk from Galdor.”

At this point, she turned her head, forcing her maid to look in her face.

“I know more about the witchfolk than I care to. Enough to know this isn’t a trap.”

She turned around again, allowing Madame Tracy to resume her work.

“Doesn’t that make them more dangerous though? That they’re not human? That they possess magic?” the older woman asked, carefully. Like most others, she’d only ever heard stories of their northern neighbours before.

“They possess magic, yes, and they’re savage and hot-headed. Absolutely terrifying opponents in battle. Right now, however, the girl cannot use any of her magic tricks, so you needn’t worry about that. And politics require patience. Wit. Cunning. Spy work and murder schemes are just not in their nature.”

Pinning one last ornament into the finished hairdo, Madame Tracy stepped back and asked

“Then what if they forged the girl? Found someone who looked convincing and painted a birthmark on her to swindle you out of money? Do you think they are capable of that?”

Marcella got up and stretched her neck, carefully, so as not to ruin the intricate work on her head.

“Perhaps. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve met the rulers of Galdor. I know their features. She has their blood as true as Aziraphale has mine.”

Laying a hand on her maids’ shoulder, the Queen gave her a small reassuring smile.

“It’s alright. I appreciate your concern but the bastard girl is no more dangerous than any other skinny waif. Now come on, we have a council meeting to prepare.”

In the western wing of the palace, where the guest chambers, the guardroom and other assorted rooms of not so great import lay, a rather tired guard stood watch.

The guards’ name was Gregory and Gregory did not like being up so early. Gregory preferred the nightshifts because the nightshifts tended to be the quietest. Unlike the city, where the drunkards and the whores tended to make the nights livelier, the palace calmed down in the evening hours and stayed calm until morning. Her Majesty rarely, if ever, entertained guests and the Prince never got into the habit of drunken shenanigans as one might have expected from a young noble.

Even the occasional secret romantic meetups that always inevitably happened wherever many people lived in the same place remained outside, between the stables and the gardens.

All in all, the nightshifts were quiet and uneventful. Some found this boring, tedious even, but Gregory revelled in it, as it presented the perfect opportunity to get completely lost in his own thoughts. In another time, in another place, Gregory would have been a philosopher. One of the great minds of his era. As it was, Gregory was good at silently standing in the same spot for hours on end, which made him a pretty alright guard.

He was just mulling over how a persons’ experiences shaped their perception and how that, in the end, affected every communication, ever, and – _CRASH!_ A noise from the room behind him ripped him out of his thoughts.

That’s why he didn’t like mornings. Too many things happening in the morning. He sighed and went into the room to check.

Inside he was greeted by a ginger woman, wrapped in a woollen blanket as if it was a cloak, and facing a broken window.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Window broke,” she answered.

“Mh-hm, yeah, I can see that. _How_ did it break?” he asked.

“Held the washbowl. Tripped. Washbowl broke the window,” she answered.

Shaking his head, Gregory stepped up to the window to carefully peer out of the broken glass. True to her word, amidst the glass shards on the ground outside lay the shards of the clay washbowl.

“What, were you just running around with that thing?” he asked.

No one answered.

When he turned around to look at the woman, he was alone in the room.

“Ah, shit,“ he said.

Out in the dim light of the early sunrise, Crowley prowled the palace grounds. Even though she was bone tired from the events of the night before, sleeping was out of the question. Aziraphale may have promised to buy her time but the guard standing outside her door (which couldn’t even be locked from the inside!) did not bode well.

So she wandered, avoiding people and looking around to see if she could find anything of interest – a hiding place, maybe, or an unguarded pantry.

Although the bitter cold air outside bit at her skin, even through the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Crowley made her way to the garden. It was the closest thing to ‘outside’ she could currently access, so just being there would probably put her at ease.

Apart from some hardy shrubs and leftover stubbles of grass, the landscape was mostly dead and grey-brown. 

Crowley kept to the sides, in the shadows of the palace walls. They were smooth, plastered in white and just tall enough that she couldn’t reach the top of them when she jumped. Just like back home…

Homesickness bloomed in her stomach and forced her to stop and breathe deeply, lest she start crying. She hated Hastur and Ligur, she really did, them and that fucking house in the middle of nowhere where they’d kept her, hated them with every fibre of her being.

And yet- she missed them.

Assholes or not, those two were still the only people she’d ever really known, just like that house, while a prison, was her home. Now that they were gone, she was alone. Truly and utterly alone in a foreign place where the threat of matrimony hung over her head.

She swallowed once, twice, three times to get rid of the lump in her throat. Crying like a stupid child wouldn’t do anything. Shaking her head, turned around and almost bumped into someone.

Said someone was almost as tall and spindly as she was, but dressed much more appropriately for the weather, with simple, worn out looking clothes and boots and short dark hair, and looking at her with concern.

“You alright, there?” they asked, looking her up and down. Crowley hurriedly tried to hide her eyes by turning her head.

That’s what crying got her. She’d managed to escape the guard and make it all the way out here but the _second_ she got teary eyed some human snuck up on her! _Stupid, stupid, stupid_!

“N-nyeah, I’m fine,” she told the wall to her right, “peachy, really, just great.”

Completely ignoring her obvious lie, the human made no move to leave. In fact, they took a step closer.

“Are you…oh, you’re that foreigner, right? The one who caused that trouble yesterday?”

Feeling caught and slightly embarrassed, Crowley turned back around to face the other one.

“Maybe…” she admitted. Then she took a closer look at the person in front of her.

“I don’t remember you.”

To their credit, the human only openly stared at her eyes for a second or two, before catching themselves and even had the decency to look a little abashed after.

“Ah, well, you couldn’t. I wasn’t there. People talk, though. Like, _a lot._ And you’re the most interesting person to talk about right now, what with being a foreigner and running away and such.”

At that, they took a closer look at Crowley again and frowned.

“You’re not running away right now, are you?” they asked.

“No…? No! I’m just- just taking a stroll, getting to know the place, you know?” Crowley answered in her best facsimile of innocence (which was not very good at all).

Either the human believed it or just didn’t care, because they just shrugged and scratched their chin.

“Alright…Sure. Sure. Not like I could stop you, anyway. I’m Newt, by the way.”

“Like the animal?”

“Uh, yes? I think so? What’s your name?”

“Crowley.”

“Also like the animal?”

“What? Oh. No.”

There was a bout of awkward silence between them, until Newt straightened and made to move away again.

“I’m gonna…I have to go get milk for breakfast, so…” they said, clearly reluctant to leave Crowley alone (either because they didn’t want her to be unsupervised or they were worried, Crowley couldn’t tell), “I could show you the stables, if you want. It’s warm in there. And there’s goats. Do you want to see the goats?”

She had not, in fact, ever seen goats before. Or stables. And she was frightfully cold. So it only took a moment of deliberation for her to decide that, yes, she did want to see the goats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a while! I'm sorry!!! I'm starting to get more responsibility at work and meeting my friends again, which is both great, but it does cut into my time to write :/ I hope you still have fun reading this :)


	5. A friend?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley being Crowley. Aziraphale being Aziraphale.

Aziraphale did not so much wake up in the morning as he stopped trying to fall asleep.

Just a minute or two after laying down the realization of just what he’d done had hit him.

  1. He disobeyed a clear order from his mother to stay at the ball. She found out and was disappointed.
  2. Innocent or not, he helped a fugitive hide from the authorities.
  3. He made a deal with someone who, when he really thought about it, maybe, probably, kind of counted as a political prisoner – or worse, a hostage – to help her escape an arranged marriage (with him. Ruining his own wedding plans in the process).
  4. WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING HER! WITH NO SECURITY OTHER THAN HER WORD!



What had he been thinking?!

Nothing, obviously. For all his habits of worrying and overthinking, he did have a horrible tendency to make spur of the moment decisions based on his emotions. Usually not on this grand a scale, though.

So he tossed and turned the remaining hours of the night, ruminating on everything said and done before, trying to come up with a clever solution for a problem he didn’t even know the scope of and finding none.

He did, however, come to a conclusion shortly before sunrise: He needed to do research.

For some reason he knew next to nothing about their northern neighbours, what culture they had, what language they spoke…what kind of relationship they had with their bastards and how they would react if one of them went missing and then returned from captivity by the hands of a foreign head of state – the basics, really.

He knew that there was no galdor ambassador, not in the palace at least and none of his instructors had ever mentioned them (and if he’d stopped for a second there, he would have heard the tiny, almost imperceptible voice in the back of his mind, asking: „Why, though?”). The only reliable source he could remember ever mentioning the kingdom in the north were historic accounts of his ancestors’ deeds, reports mentioning battles between dead Kings and ‘witchfolk’ or ‘beastpeople’.

So he rose with the sun, driven, despite his fatigue, by the prospect of spending his day learning.

Getting dressed, he thought back to Crowley. Was she alright? The last he had seen of her was when she had been ‘shown to her chambers’. It hadn’t felt right to leave her a few hours ago and it still didn’t. After all, she was all alone, poor girl didn’t even have a maid with her.

Aziraphale decided to stop by her room, then, see how she was doing. It wasn’t the most proper thing to do, visiting a lady without a chaperone, but there would most likely still be guards around, so they wouldn’t be alone together.

The palace was relatively lively that morning, with the preparations for the council meeting and the clean-up work in the great hall. Aziraphale knew every single one of the faces that passed him by and all the names belonging to them. They greeted him politely and he greeted back.

When he made it to the guest chambers, he was met with an unexpected scene:

A guard (…Mr. Hunting, if he remembered correctly), who looked like he really wanted to be somewhere else, stood opposite of Captain Archer and Madame Tracy, both of whom were obviously not happy.

Aziraphale only heard part of the conversation between them, but what he heard was not good.

“…only one of you to begin with?” Madame Tracy asked, exasperated.

“Well,” Hunting answered, “Bower’s got the runs, so I told him to lay down, get some rest…”

“And you didn’t care to arrange a replacement?” the captain asked, incredulously.

“I can watch a door for a few hours by myself.”

“You obviously can’t!”

At that, Mr. Hunting grabbed the doorknob and pulled it almost closed, gesturing at the wood.

“Door’s still here, ain’t it?”

The young prince knew his mother’s maid in waiting long enough to see that she suppressed laughter at that and anyone could see that Captain Archer was seconds away from exploding, so he decided to step in and defuse the situation.

“Captain! Madame Tracy. Mr. Hunting. Good morning!”

A nod in each direction and a careful, (hopefully) friendly smile. One nod and two bows in return.

“What, uh…What seems to be the problem here?”

As usual, Archer was quick to regain his composure.

“I was just about to reprimand Mr. Hunting here for his failure, Your Highness, nothing you need to be concerned about,” he answered in that same tone of voice he always used with the prince, most likely aiming for firm but friendly and yet landing smack dab in the overlap of condescending and patronising.

“Oh, I’m sure whatever happened, happened in good faith…What happened, anyway?” Aziraphale asked, looking at the guard and the maid in turn.

Madame Tracy sighed.

“Miss Crowley made a run for it first chance she got.”

What she did not say, because she didn’t need to, was: _They told you this would happen, you didn’t listen, now look what happened._

Of course. _Of course._ There were dozens of possible scenarios on how any given situation could go wrong at any time in Aziraphale’s mind, so of course Crowley breaking her word and running away were among them. He just had not expected it to happen so soon.

“A-are we sure she’s gone?” he asked quietly, still clinging to hope.

The captain piped up again.

“She was reported missing over half an hour ago. None of the guards or gatekeepers I questioned have seen her, so, chances are, she’s still on the property. Every one of my men has been ordered to look out for her and escort her to her new chambers when found.”

“New chambers?”

“She broke the window in these.”

Outside of the palace, Crowley was ecstatic.

Following this Newt-person had been the best decision she ever made! There were so many- so many, uh…things! _Things!_

Newt patiently answered all of her questions and pulled her along whenever she forgot to walk over all the new impressions.

That was the cowshed. That was the pigsty. Over there was a servant house. That was a vegetable garden. Yes, they produced some of their food in the palace. No, not all of it. That’s was a horse stable. This is the goat shed, please come inside.

She could barely keep up with all the new smells, almost sniffing herself into hyperventilating and constantly opening her mouth to pick them up with her tongue and rub them against her palate, probably looking like a gaping fish, but _fuck it!_

On the way she had picked up all manner of animals – she only recognised the smell of horse – yeast, freshly baked bread, _so many people,_ hay, burning wood, fresh laundry-

“Good morning, Carrie!”

“Good morning, Ne-OH LORD!”

The milkmaid jumped up, tripped over her little stool and landed, wide eyed, on their ass.

(Only years later, while reminiscing over a nice glass of wine, would Crowley realize why the poor thing had been so scared. She really must have been a frightening vision: A tall, dark stranger barging into the shed, wrapped in a dark ‘cloak’, with her flaming hair a mess from the night, yellow snake eyes wide and wild from excitement and huffing and panting like a lunatic. Truly among the worst first impressions in history.)

Newt immediately scrambled to help them up and calm them down, whispering some things Crowley could not hear from where she stood. It took a minute and in the end they didn’t look all that convinced but they nodded. With a bit of a strained smile, Newt turned to make introductions.

“So, Carrie, this is Crowley. She’s…new here.”

Seeing the beseeching look in Newt’s eyes, she tried for a smile. It came out an awkward grimace.

“And Crowley, this is Carrie; she’s one of the milkmaids here.”

_Ah._ She. Noted.

While Crowley had very little reference to go on, Carrie looked rather young. Younger than herself, anyway, and probably a few years younger than Newt, who looked about…? 16? 17?

She was relatively short and stout, with adorably round cheeks and brown curls. While patting the straw from her backside she looked up with her warm brown eyes, shy and insecure.

“I’m sorry if I was rude,” she said, taking a step forward.

“Please don’t curdle my milk.”

What?

“…hn?”

Not seeing (or ignoring) Newt making an imploring gesture at her side, the milkmaid pressed on.

“My gramma used to tell that if we’re not good the fairies would come and curdle our milk and put holes in our socks.”

After biting her lip and looking deep in thought for a second, she looked up again.

“Please don’t put holes in my socks, neither. I just darned them.”

“I, er…”

Crowley stopped herself from correcting her mid-thought. Out of the, what? Four? Out of the four humans she’d really spoken to, so far, two had immediately assumed the wrong origins for her. Was that going to be a regular thing? Was correcting them even worth it? Or could she maybe even have a bit of fun with it?

“I won’t,” she decided on, “but only because you apologized.”

Relief washed over Carrie’s chubby face.

“Oh, thank you! Uhm…would you like some milk, Ms. Fairy?”

“Crowley.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Crowley. Would you like some milk? I’m almost done with the goats.”

Thinking about it, milk did sound great. Her last meal had been, well, her dowry, and before that, a supper she’d barely touched for all the fear and anxiety of the evening. She nodded and Carrie eagerly went on with her work, chatting with Newt all the while.

It turned out, after some questioning, that the goat shed had started out as a hay barn, only coming to house a handful of goats and two mules over the years. The mules looked adorable, like horses, only softer and nicer, but they seemed a bit anxious around her, so Crowley left them be. The goats, on the other hand, were curious enough to investigate the newcomer, getting in close to sniff at her. One of them, a young one, Carrie said, even playfully head-butted her.

Sitting in the fragrant hay, sipping the warm, sweet, heavy milk she’d been given and watching the animals while the humans talked, Crowley relaxed for the first time in days. Maybe even weeks.

While life at home had never been all that harmonious, Hastur, Ligur and her had established a somewhat reliable routine over the years. As long as she stayed out of the way and didn’t do anything they considered trouble, they left her mostly alone, and if they didn’t bother her, she didn’t do anything to annoy them on purpose.

They had never made it a secret that they only kept her to make a profit someday, but for most of her life that profit had been a nebulous concept somewhere in the future.

She didn’t know whether or not they had always counted on pawning her off to Marcella or if the news of the Queen throwing a ball to get her son hitched made them decide. It didn’t matter anyway. All she knew, all she needed to know, was that she was to be a broodmare for some human. Used and then forgotten when she inevitably died in childbed. The fact that her intended husband happened to be an oathbreaker was just the icing on top.

Aziraphale seemed nice enough at first glance…but that didn’t mean anything. What comparison did she have? Two grumpy old fucks who only worked together because no one else could stand them. Next to them, anyone looked nice. Speaking of, Newt tried to get her attention again.

“So, I got, uh,” they said, holding up a full pitcher, “I mean, I’m done here. I should get back…what about you?”

“What about me?”

Newt stared into the middle distance for a beat or two.

“There’s probably someone worrying about you right now, isn’t there?” they said carefully.

That was a pretty _diplomatic_ way to describe the situation. Crowley wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not – and which option she preferred.

“Maybe. So what?” she asked, looking in Newt’s eyes, unblinking.

They held her gaze.

“Maybe you should go back, too, then. Before anyone worries too much. Or gets angry.”

She cocked her head to the side, never breaking eye contact.

“What are you going to do if I don’t?”

“Nothing much I can do, really. But I’d have to tell someone, or I could get in a lot of trouble.”

At that, she relented and finally looked away. No use in making that one’s life more complicated than it needed to be. Not to mention, they had a point – people were probably worried, or, more likely, really fucking mad, already. As long as she had no solid escape plan, unnecessarily angering her ‘hosts’ was best avoided. (Crowley’s definition of necessary differed greatly from that of many others and so had always been, and would forever remain, a source of vexation for all parties involved.)

“Fiiine,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, rolling her eyes.

She also pretended not to notice how Newt minimally relaxed when she gave in.

They said their goodbyes to Carrie and made their way back to the palace. Crowley made it a point _not_ to mention how she noticed Newt avoiding busy paths and the two of them went unnoticed. Until they arrived at a door leading inside the west wing, that is, where a pair of guards welcomed (apprehended) and then escorted her (dragged her by the shoulders) to her (new) chambers.

A tall, neat looking person with a strong jaw, wearing the same light blue and silver uniform as the guards, only with a lot more tassels and shiny metal parts, welcomed them in the hallway.

“We found the runaway, captain,” one of the guards said while both of them saluted. (Or tried to, anyway. The one on her left, subsequently grabbing her with their right hand, raised their left hand as if to salute with that, decided differently, dropped that hand and then decided to make do with a little bow.)

The person addressed as captain gave them both a nod.

“Good job. You two will take position here. No one gets in or out aside from the usual exceptions, do you understand?”

Two ‘Yes, Sir’s and the captain took Crowley from the guards and unceremoniously shoved her through a door opposite from the one she’d escaped earlier. The door slammed shut behind her and she was alone again.

“Asshole.”

With nothing else to do, Crowley went ahead and examined this new room.

On the surface, it looked almost exactly like the one where Aziraphale and she had made their deal – a simple bed, a closet, a little table with a stool and a dresser with a washbowl and a pitcher on it.

Where the window in the other room had shown the cliffs and the ocean, the one in here only showed a view of the brown garden. She sighed. The trick with the broken window would not work a second time and the way it was built, with lead cames holding palm sized, square glass panes, trying to escape through it was out of the question.

She took the carefully wrapped up silver chain out of her dress, from the loosely falling fabric where the former owner’s bosom used to stretch it, and placed it out of sight above the doorframe. Then she busied herself systematically taking the room apart.

By the time she heard the knock on the door, she’d taken the legs off the stool (only tacked together, not glued), the table top off its base (it could actually be screwed on and off by a thread carved into the base, very sophisticated), taken the closet’s doors off the hinges and was currently busy working apart the dresser’s drawers.

The person knocking turned out to be the ginger from the night before and they didn’t wait for an answer before coming inside and then stopping dead in their tracks. Behind them, not entering but standing in the doorway, looking in with a worried expression was Aziraphale.

The ginger one took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of their nose.

“What, exactly, happened here?”

Crowley managed to pry one of the boards loose from its joints and looked up from where she sat on the floor, grinning.

“I was bored.”

They muttered something under their breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘It’s not even noon, yet.’ and stepped over the strewn about wood.

Sitting down on their haunches, they looked Crowley over.

“You didn’t bring your wardrobe with you, right?” they asked.

“Right.”

“And silver burns you, right? Anything else you can’t touch?”

She considered giving a nonsense answer just to mess with the human, but then decided against it.

“Metal. Like, all of it.”

The human threw their head back and frowned at the ceiling for a second, before stating, “We’ll have to bathe you in one of the laundry tubs, then.”

Then they got up again, pulling Crowley along at the elbows.

“Wait, what?”

“We’re giving you a bath. You have hay in your hair and you smell like sweat and I don’t even want to know what.”

“It’s goats.”

“Great. Come along, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one's a bit earlier and shorter than intended, but I decided to post it like this instead of taking another 2-3 weeks again.  
> Side note: I had a bit of a jokey conversation with my sister and the topic of possessive apostrophies came up - why did none of you tell me I'm an idiot? I've been doing them wrong for 4 chapters X( For real though, I'm kind of embarrased and might even go back, someday, and correct them.  
> Aside from that, thank you, thank you, thank you for your feedback! Sometimes I'm like 'nothing I write is interesting or good enough' and then reading your comments and finding out that someone, even if it's just one person, likes my writing, makes my day! Finding out that something I did made someone else even a bit happy is just *chef's kiss* for the soul.  
> See ya'll next chapter ^^


	6. Continuation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The continuation of the previous chapter. Short and sweet before we get into the juicy stuff.
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains nudity (non sexual) and some statements that could be considered transphobic, I think.

Fellwind Palace’s laundry room was a hall like structure hidden away in the basement of the west wing. Like the rest of the building, the laundry room had never been intended to house as much activity as it currently did and as a result the,once effective, sophisticated ventilation system had grown shut with lime over the years, causing the steam to gather at the ceiling and a soapy crust to take over most of the surfaces.

Tubs of all sizes, some wooden, some made of copper and heated by fires below, covered most of the floorspace and in between, the wash women worked, at all times of the day and the night, stirring the laundry in the tubs with long, wooden poles, carrying, wrangling, moving cumulative tons of cloth each day and gossiping and laughing all the while.

(Their position in the palace was quite unique. While one would assume them to be out of the loop of palace gossip, owing to their remote workplace, the ‘ladies of the cloth’ were indeed the information hub of the staff. Stains can spell intricate stories for those who know how to read them, after all.)

Leaving the guards at the door, since layered cloth, leather and metal provided excellent aesthetics and protection but also made the wet heat unbearable, Madame Tracy quickly arranged for a corner of the room to be separated with a sheet and prepared with all the necessities for a decent bath.

\-----

It was all a little overwhelming for Crowley. Not just this next new place, these additional new people...everything. She hadn't slept in, fuck, she didn't even know, hadn't had a real meal in just as long...Fear and excitement had kept her going for a good while but she was reaching her limits.

The warmth enveloping her like a blanket finally tipped the scales from 'overstimulated and jumpy' to 'almost falling asleep standing up'. Owing to that, it took Madame Tracy's words a while to penetrate what felt like a thick layer of cotton around her brain.

“Uh...What?”

“I said: Do you need help with your dress?” they repeated, patiently.

Crowley looked down at herself. The grey overdress she wore had mud stains, hay and goat hair on it and – she lifted the fabric to look at the underdress – her under-things could do with some water and soap as well.

“N-no. I can wash that myself...I don't have anything else to wear though...”

A huff from the human made her look up again.

“That's good to know,” they said, smiling “but I meant taking it off. Do you need help with that or can you do it yourself while I take care of your hair?”

_Right. Of course. Bath._

Crowley roughly rubbed her eyes. Letting her guard down now, when she still didn't know what to make of this Tracy-person, was a bad idea. 

Instead of giving a verbal answer, Crowley got to work on the pins struggling to hold the quasi bun on her head in place, turning the pinned up, tangled mess into a regular tangled mess.

Next, she loosened the lacing on her oversized hand-me-down and unceremoniously pulled all her garments over her head and dropped them on the floor.

\-----

All in all, things were going rather more smoothly than Madame Tracy had feared. From what she'd heard and what she'd seen the night before, she had half expected the girl to lash out. Maybe to make a run for it, _again._

Instead, she behaved. Good.

Her Majesty had ordered Tracy to make the girl presentable and, while she was at it, to make a first, tentative estimate of her character and education, so they could plan the next steps in preparing her to become a good, or at least acceptable, wife.

So far, she seemed like a troublemaker who could be agreeable under the right circumstances, smart enough to evade the guards for a while and not aggressive. She could work with that.

Furthermore, the girl wasn't ugly. Yes, she had those unnatural snake eyes, but apart from that, she also had expressive features, a strong profile and a striking hair colour.

As she undressed, Madame Tracy observed, half trying to figure out whether the Queen's maiden wardrobe would fit her and half looking out for any more monstrous features that were previously hidden.

The first thing that caught her eye, however, was how uncomfortably visible Crowley's ribcage and spine were under her skin. Being as bony as that, the poor thing would probably not survive a real cold (not to mention a pregnancy).

Aside from that, though, everything looked alright. No tail, no scales, no disfiguring scars, only more of those leather strings that supposedly bound her unnatural powers, one around her waist and one around each thigh.

The only real surprise came when Crowley turned around. Most of her looked like the body of a regular, if skinny, young woman - the expected amount of hair in the expected places, a belly button (snakes usually didn't have those, right...?), and no superfluous bits. What stood out, though, was a distinct lack of certain bits.

“What happened to your chest?”

Crowley's hand flew up to her (completely flat) chest.

“Whu-? What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Tracy said, stepping closer to look for scar tissue or anything similar and finding none “where are your breasts?”

“Not here...?” Crowley responded with a shrug.

“No one said anything about tits. Hastur only told me to have a cunt.”

When Madame Tracy did not look the least bit less confused, Crowley explained further.

“You know, 'cause I'm supposed to be a woman? Women have cunts, right?”

The other side of the provisory curtain was suspiciously quiet, so Madame Tracy lowered her voice even more.

“'Supposed to be'? Are you not?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“Uh...Yes? No? I don't know what you want me to say right now...”

Crowley looked down at herself, then back at Madame Tracy and threw her hands up, her face a mix of confusion and frustration.

“I have the parts, right? And unless you know how to get rid of these,” she pointed at the bindings on her left arm,” I'm stuck like this.”

Something akin to understanding dawned on Tracy's mind.

“You mean, you could change it? As in...shapeshifting?”

Again, Crowley shrugged.

“Yeah, if you want to call it that.”

“Ah.”

\---

Aziraphale spent the first few hours of the day, after the scare of the morning, in the library, trying to do research and not coming up with much. A collection of folk tales including 'fey folk' and shapeshifting villains, a retelling of King Julius V defeating a 'giant, northern serpent' and an account of a witch in one of the midland clans who had allegedly gained her powers through relations with the galdor.

All in all, not very useful.

He had completely forgotten the time when one of the younger servants (William, whose father worked in the stables, if he wasn't mistaken) came to inform him that his mother expected him for lunch. 

When he arrived in the dining room, Marcella was already seated at the head of the table, giving him a small smile.

“Mother,” he greeted, sitting down.

“Aziraphale,” she responded.

“I missed you at the council meeting.”

Straight to the point.

“Ah...well, I think we both know the council prefers me absent.”

“Don't you think my feelings take precedence over the council's?”

“Y-Yes, mother.”

She spread a napkin over her lap while a servant placed soup bowls in front of each of them.

“Did you...um, does the council know about...our guest?”

“Yes. They know about your fiancé”

“Is that what she officially is?”

“No, not yet. She will not be announced to the public until I can be certain that she wont embarrass us of herself when she is.”

Aziraphale kept his eyes on the rich broth in front of him.

“Do you have any plans on when that will be?”

Marcella huffed a little laugh.

“Why? Are you impatient to get married or dreading the day?”

“Neither, really. Just curious.”

“No, I do not have plans, yet. I'll let you know once I do.”

“Thank you.”

After that, they both ate in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess which butterfingered klutz lost her memory stick with this chapter on it. This one!  
> I'm sorry it took this long to get you such a short chapter but I did have to rewrite the whole damn thing again. Really frustrated right now.  
> The good news is, my vacation time got approved, so I'll have two weeks off of work next month and since I can't go anywhere at the moment I'll have time to get writin'! Yay^^  
> As always, I hope you'll enjoy this one despite not much happening.  
> Love ya!
> 
> P.S. Can you tell which Pratchett book I'm trying to reference in thes chapter?


	7. A Stroll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley finally get to spend some time together. Yay!

In life, as in nature, there are a few undeniable and unchangeable facts: Water trickles ever downward, the sun will unfailingly rise in the east each morning, and whenever there is a group of more than two people, there will be gossip.

So, as sure as autumn follows summer, rumours about the most interesting thing to happen in the palace in years popped up overnight like mushrooms after the rain.

_Have you heard? They say the Prince caught a fairy woman!_

_She ain’t no fairy, you idiot. She’s a witch._

_I heard she cast a spell on him so he would fall in love with her!_

_Well, I heard she’s not a person at all, but a doll, with no features or nothing, and the Queen made her to be her daughter in law because no real woman is good enough for her son._

_Bullshit! My brother’s seen her, y’know, and he says she has glowing, yellow cat eyes and claws and teeth like a beast!_

_That don’t sound right. Why would Aziraphale marry a beast?_

_Don’t you know? Every man marries his mother!_

\---

After a, more or less, good night’s rest and blissfully unaware of the fun the staff had at his expense, Aziraphale was ready to tackle the new day and hopefully make more progress in his research than before.

A hearty breakfast and some preparations later, the young Prince, with an armed guard in tow, made his way to the west wing, again. He would deny it, if asked, but just at the last corner before turning into the hallway towards his destination, Aziraphale paused for a second to take a deep breath and brace himself for the possibility of walking into trouble, again. When he turned it, though, to his immense relief, the door in question was shut and no one other than the expected guards was to be seen.

He greeted both of the men with a short nod and then stepped in between them to knock at the door.

“Who’s there?” 

The question came immediately and sounded oddly muffled.

“It’s me. The Prince, I mean. Aziraphale.” 

He felt immensely foolish, talking to the door like this.

“Whaddya want?”

“Well, I thought I’d pay you a visit. We haven’t had the chance for a proper conversation, yet, have we?” he said, glancing sideways at the men standing to his left and right who tried very hard to look like they were not, in fact, listening intently. Choosing his words carefully, he continued.

“Seeing as you’re living here now, we probably ought to get acquainted, don’t you think? We could take a stroll, if you’re amenable, get some fresh air.”

This time, the voice on the other side of the door sounded closer, if still muffled.

“Oh, am I _allowed_ to leave this room, now?”

The exaggerated, mocking tone was not lost on Aziraphale, but he chose to ignore it.

“Her Majesty allowed it under strict supervision, yes. That said, what do you think? I can leave you be if you want.”

A few seconds, then “Wait.” and before he could say anything further the sound of a heavy, wooden object scraping over the stone floor filled the air.

When directly looked at with a questioning expression, the man to his left only shrugged apologetically and the one to the right mumbled something about ‘safety measures’.

It took a minute or two for Crowley to finish whatever she was doing in there and when she opened the door afterward, she looked a little flushed and breathed heavily.

Aside from that though, what really took Aziraphale by surprise was the day and night (figuratively and literally) difference in her appearance from their first encounter. Gone were the ugly, ill-fitting garments from before, replaced with a simple, yet elegant dress in dark green, slit in strategic places to reveal the red brown fabric beneath. Gone was the tangled bird’s nest on her head, now tamed into hip length curls flowing openly down her back. Even her face looked different with her skin no longer ashen from fear. If Aziraphale didn’t know any better, he would have assumed the frightened girl from yesternight had already been successful in her escape, replaced with this admittedly quite handsome and confident looking doppelganger. 

“Did you…barricade the door?” he asked, in lieu of having anything smart to say.

“Yeah. Had to. There’s no bolt.” she answered matter-of-fact-ly.

“Why would you do that?”

“To stop people from coming in. Obviously.”

“Obviously…”

A snort, badly disguised as a cough, could be heard from his right.

“So, anyway…After you…?”

The two of them and their armed companion made their way outside mostly in silence, with Crowley leading the way and Aziraphale lost in thought, debating himself on possible topics to discuss so their chaperone would not become suspicious. Polite, surface level conversation with strangers was already difficult enough for him, adding a mutually beneficial deal to commit something that might, under the wrong circumstances, viewed from the wrong angle possibly look something like treason and a listener to the mix turned it from a chore to an almost insurmountable task.

Outside, the weather was pleasant. The sky was clear and bright blue and the sun just strong enough that one did not necessarily need a coat. Crowley immediately found a bright spot with direct light, between a trimmed down bush and a little bench, and stood in it, soaking up the warmth with the closest thing to a relaxed expression he had seen on her yet. Not knowing what else to do with himself, Aziraphale sat down to her right.

“So…do you like…the sun?” he tried, clumsily, cringing at himself even as he said it. Even through his embarrassment, or maybe because of it, he found himself unable to look away as Crowley slowly turned her head and fixed him with an incredulous look. Seemingly struggling to find the right thing to say to that ( _what_ do _you say to that?)_ she opened and closed her mouth several times, making abortive noises each time, until she settled on:

“Do you?”

Aziraphale struggled to decide which would be more awkward, continuing this conversation or letting it die down. In the end, he chose what he thought was the more polite option.

“You know, I never really thought about it, but I, I guess I do. Everybody likes being warm, right, and it’d be terribly cold without the sun. Just freezing. There is fire, of course, but you can’t always be close to a fire.”

He knew he was rambling but felt himself unable to stop, felt like his soul was floating next to his body and watching it make an ass of itself from the outside.

“And crops, too. I mean, we’d have no crops without ol’ Mr. Sun, as they say,” _nobody says that! Stop talking!_ “And that would be bad news for everyone, not just people, but animals as well, right? Cattle? No more cattle. No more…just anything, I guess…? So…erm…what I’m trying to say, is, well, I think my feelings towards the sun are, um, positive. I mean, I do. Like it. The sun.”

Aziraphale felt the awkwardness like a pain in his teeth. Like a cramp in his lungs. He hated it, hated that he always did that, that his mouth kept spewing scrambled words like there was something malevolent between his brain and his tongue that gleefully picked apart what had started out as real thoughts so they ended up as nonsense. That was one of the main reasons no one took him seriously, he knew. The staff treated him with respect, yes, but only because of his title, only to his face. Anyone who could afford their condescension to be known made it quite clear that they looked down on him. He was too nice, too soft, too sheltered; he was no hunter, no fighter, only ever picked up a sword for obligatory training, spent all his time alone with his texts and his thoughts – the failed final scion of a line of proud warrior kings who couldn’t even conquer his own words.

He was so caught up in his self-loathing that the sound of Crowley’s voice nearly made him jump right of the bench.

“ _Mr_. Sun?” she asked, squinting, when he turned to look at her, into the sky.

“Excuse me?”

“Sun’s a man, too?”

Well, at least the confusion snapped him out of his melancholy.

“No. I’ve never been up close to it, but I’m fairly certain the sun is an inanimate object.”

“Then why did-“she started, turning towards him, only to stop herself. “Never mind.”

Something in the defeated tone of her voice rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn’t explain, but he wanted it gone.

“It’s a figure of speech. A playful thing, just for fun. I’ve seen it in a book once, an illustration, where someone had drawn the sun with a face and it looked like a jolly old man with round, red cheeks.”

Aziraphale squished his own cheeks between his hands in demonstration and gave Crowley a careful, little smile. She snorted a laugh before she could stop herself and turned away, presumably to hide her own smile. That felt a lot better.

“Is it different in galdor…ish? Galdorian? Is your sun female?”

Crowley faced him again with a slight frown.

“My sun is…the sun. Look, I know about the whole ‘man and woman’ thing, I just…I don’t get how you people can just look at someone and go ‘ _Yes, this person is definitely a man.’”_

A blush mixed into the frown on her face and she looked to the ground, obviously uncomfortable and embarrassed, before making a vague gesture in the direction of the silent guard standing a few feet away (whom Aziraphale had completely forgotten about until then).

“Like them! What are they?”

“A man.”

“How do you know? He’s wearing clothes!”

Aziraphale and the confused guard exchanged a glance. How did he know? He had to admit he’d never really thought about it before.

“Um…yes, he’s wearing breeches, because he’s a man. If he were a woman he’d wear a dress…”

Though he had never considered it, the implications of a culture that differed so wildly from his own that a member of it had trouble telling the most basic information about a compatriot of his instantly fascinated Aziraphale.

“How can you tell the difference where you come from? Jewellery? Hairstyles? Oh, I once read about a country where they paint their faces with colourful symbols, to indicate status, I think.”

“Where I come from, it never mattered. Until, well…”

The unspoken words and their implications hit him like a bucket of ice water. It never mattered, until. The difference between men and women, her being a woman never mattered, until…Until it became relevant in relation to him being a man. Until it meant she could be sold to become his wife. Looking back, the new information did not make her rather ending everything than marrying him less painful, but it did make it less personal. They were not just two nobles from different regions of the kingdom without previous contact – they were foreigners in each other’s eyes, from kingdoms and cultures so far removed that even the minimal insight he had gained revealed they might as well be from different worlds. 

“Has _Her Majesty_ said anything about how long I can stay outside?” Crowley suddenly asked in a blatant attempt to change the topic.

Aziraphale took the bait, gratefully. 

“No, she has not. I’m expected to join her for lunch, though, and attend lessons afterward; and since you made a habit of disappearing the second people look away, you’re not to be outside your room without a chaperone.”

“Hab- I- Habit?! I did it twice!” Crowley protested in exaggerated outrage. “It’s not a habit if I do it twice. Twice could be a coincident. Now, three or four times, there’s a pattern there, that’s a habit.”

After the heavy thoughts from before, the sheer levity of Crowley putting on a mock pout and acting like a severely wounded diva was enough to send Aziraphale into a short but immensely relieving giggle fit. He knew giggling like a little girl was unbecoming of a man of his status, but Crowley didn’t look like she was judging him, even allowing herself to openly smile his way for a moment.

It was a nice smile.

“Well, then, let’s hope, for your sake, that you make a habit of being reliable and trustworthy, soon, so you won’t have to be supervised all the time.” , he said once he’d caught himself.

“I’m the most reliable, trustworthy person I know.”

“How many people _do_ you know?”

Some undefined gestures and noncommittal noises, then:

“A few. I know Carrie, the goat girl. And Frog.”

“Frog?”

“Y’know, Frog. ‘Bout yea tall, dark hair. Wears breaches.”

Aziraphale blinked owlishly, racking his brain for anyone named Frog. While it was entirely possible that someone had been hired without his knowledge, he thought he had at least heard the names of all the staff members before and he would have remembered someone named after an anim-

“Do you mean Newt?”

“Yeah, that. Newt. He?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“He showed me the stables.”

She paused for a second and when she spoke again, her voice was low, almost shy.

“…do we still have time to go to the stables?”

“Of course.”

\---

Newton stretched his arms over his head and backwards until they couldn’t go any further and stayed that way as long as possible, before releasing the tension with a sigh. Work in the stables was relaxing, he found, but tended to make him sore after a while, especially in his arms and neck. It wasn’t  _technically_ his job to tend to Norris’ basic needs, grooming him and cleaning out his box, but he didn’t mind and he did understand the stablehand. Norris could be unpredictable, particularly with people he didn’t like. Unfortunately for the poor stable hand, Norris only liked his owner and barely tolerated Newt. They’d come to somewhat of an agreement, the horse and him, that allowed Newt to groom and handle him without being bitten or stomped on in exchange for treats.

Despite all that, Newt liked the grumpy horse, just as he liked its owner. He tended to get along with most anyone. His parents ( _Lady Siddy bless their patient hearts)_ had once called that a precious skill to have. It helped him to stay on whatever old Shadwell had where a good side would be in other people. Over the, what, four…? Had it been so long, already? Yes, four years in Shadwell’s employ, he had come to love the old coot like a grandfather and he considered himself lucky to be his squire. Come to think of it, he considered himself lucky in many regards. 

Being born into low nobility had its perks, despite what the people who called them things like ‘mud-barons’ or ‘farm lords’ thought. Admittedly, yes, the Pulsifer Barony consisted of little more than one village, some fields, a couple of acres of forest and ‘Pulsifer Manor’ (a house that stood on a little hill just outside the village and was slightly bigger than the rest of them. They had a wall around their estate!) but that also meant their duties consisted of little more than collecting taxes and breaking up the occasional tavern brawl. No one expected them to attend high society events, or strive for prestigious offices. No political marriages or honourable warrior death in protection of his Queen for Newt. The Pulsifers were free to do more or less whatever they wanted, within reason, of course. Baron Pulsifer worked as a carpenter, whenever he wasn’t busy meticulously writing reports of the very few things that happened in his domain, and the Baroness was something akin to an honorary priest, spending a lot of her time in the village’s tiny temple and tending to whatever ailed the people. The only thing they expected of their son was to take up some sort of occupation. It wouldn’t do, to be a lazy bum and live off of their subject’s work! Some nobles could do that, yes, most of them did, in fact, but when everyone in your Barony knew you personally, the risk of getting the shit beaten out of you by disgruntled farmers was just too high for that to be worth it.

Newt had considered becoming a craftsman, a clockmaker preferably, but he’d proven to have a terrible knack for breaking sophisticated machinery. Or unsophisticated machinery. Any metal object more complicated than a spoon, really. Over time he had managed to destroy one of their farmers ploughs (the oxen had been spanned in correctly, it just happened to leave the actual plough bit of the plough behind when it started walking), several scythes ( _“I swear, I didn’t even hit it that hard! Why_ are  _there rocks on your field, anyway?”)_ the wheels and axles of their wagon ( _“I’m so sorry, dad, I don’t even know how that happened”)_ and, lately, swords ( _“Yeah, you know what? Yeah. Of course.”)._ That bode ill for both craftsmanship and a military career. 

It was through chance, really, that Newt had gotten the opportunity to become Shadwell’s squire, something he had not even considered before. Squirehood was usually reserved for ambitious lordlings, those who wanted the coveted title of knight and maybe build up connections to important places and people in the process. None of them wanted to work for Shadwell, though, seeing as he had a reputation for being difficult. Plenty of knights were difficult (allegedly. There were stories of knights being violent drunkards and gambling whore hounds going around. Not having to deal with those was just another thing that made their tiny barony so great.), but Shadwell was also from the long since conquered midlands, and no highborn noble son would work for one of  _those people,_ no matter what kind of office they held. It had seemed only fitting, then, when a family friend had mentioned to them that the Midland-Knight was looking for a squire, for the Mud-Baron’s son to apply.

He liked his work. He liked life in the palace and service for Shadwell far more than he had ever thought he would. His duties consisted of far less armour polishing and training than expected. Most of the time, he just tended to the old knight, keeping his chambers clean, managing his correspondences, fetching his milk first thing in the morning, because Shadwell insisted on having goat milk for breakfast and didn’t trust the kitchen staff not to cheat him in some way, that kind of thing.

Aside from that, Newt found it immensely funny that he had more or less stumbled into the kind of position some of the more aspiring young lords would kill for. Newt himself was too young to remember, had not even been born, then, but he had heard from the older staff that, back before Her Majesty had taken the Crown, dozens of nobles and wannabe-nobles would congregate at the palace each day, competing for just the tiniest bit of royal attention. Now that the royal family had taken permanent residence in the ass end of nowhere, opportunities for noble bootlicking were scarce. There were no more lavish parties, hardly any balls at all, and if one wanted to take up Her Majesty’s time and attention, one better had a damn good reason. Despite all that, here he was, Newton Pulsifer, living under the same roof as the head of state! 

He moved his head from side to side, carefully stretching his neck muscles, then gave Norris a pet on the flank. The horse had been good, today, telegraphing its movements obviously enough for Newt to get his feet out of toe-crushing distance in time.

Suddenly, shouts, the sounds of a distressed horse and loud thumping could be heard from a different part of the stable. Fearing the worst, Newt ran towards the commotion. Even though none of the horses were aggressive, Norris aside, they were still large and easily frightened animals. He had seen the aftermath of an otherwise calm steed getting spooked and kicking out. That face had never been the same again.

Relief washed over him when he reached the source of the commotion and no blood or messed up faces could be seen. Instead, he saw Petrichor, the Prince’s personal horse, bucking wildly in her box, with the Prince himself trying to calm her down from behind the guard who stood between them for his protection, and a lady in green pressing herself against the nearest wall, clearly shocked.

In the surrounding boxes, the other horses picked up their companion’s distress and it was only a matter of time for one or more of them to hurt themselves in their panic. Newt grabbed a carrot from an open crate on the floor and approached the mare carefully. It wasn’t the safest thing to do, he knew that, but he had to stop her before anyone could get injured. He managed to calm poor Petrichor with the food and firm but gentle pets, just the way she liked, between the eyes, within a minute or two. She was still nervous and jumpy, but at least she stopped kicking and making the others upset. When the general mood in the stable returned to being somewhat calm, Newt stepped out of the box, latched it shut and bowed before Aziraphale.

“Your Highness. Are you alright? What happened?”

The Prince was clearly just as distraught as his horse, looking from her to the woman accompanying him and back with wide, sad eyes.

“I don’t know what happened! She was perfectly calm until Crowley tried to pet her. She’s never done that before.”

Crowley? Newt did a double take. Indeed, standing there, as far away from any horse as possible, was the same girl from the morning before, only less…dishevelled looking. Truth be told, he had not expected to so her again, so soon, if ever. He gave her a little wave and a smile.

“How about you? Are you alright, too? Did she bite you, or anything?”

Crowley nodded, then frowned and shook her head.

“Yes. No. I mean, I’m fine.”

“Stuff like that happens, you know?” Newt announced to the room as a whole. “Maybe she saw a mouse. Or she got bit by a clegg, who knows?”

Aziraphale nodded sadly and tried to smile at Crowley. It came out a little watery. Then he opened his mouth to say something but stopped and paled when he saw something over Newt’s shoulder. Newt turned to see Norris, leisurely munching away at the contents of the crate. He realized, too late, that he’d forgotten to close the latch to his box in his haste.

“Oh no. No, no, no. Bad Norris! Bad horse, back to your box!”

Seeing as he held no treats to bribe him with, Norris ignored him and walked in the opposite direction of where he was supposed to go. Again, the guard manoeuvred himself between the Prince and a horse, looking rather unhappy about it. The stallion’s reputation exceeded the stable. 

After lazily sniffing at the two men and not finding them all that interesting, the horse turned to Crowley, who somehow managed to press herself even further against the wall. She raised her hands, simultaneously wanting to push him away and unwilling to touch him, clenching her eyes shut when he snuffled in her face. 

Apparently, Norris found her much more likeable than she did him, because he proceeded to rub his nose on her hand. Crowley opened her eyes again and frantically looked to the others for help.

“What does it want?”

Newt lifted his own hand, curling and uncurling his fingers a few times to simulate the act of scratching.

“Just like this. Just- just scritch his nose, but gently. I’ll be right back.”

He all but ran to the corner where the stablehand had put a table and a shelf, in an approximation of an office. There was a little baggy of candied fruits in there, he knew, as a very special treat, both for the horses and their keeper. Once Newt found it, he returned to find Norris happily rubbing the full length of his face on Crowley’s, huffing at her contently. 

Whatever he liked about her held no candle to candied fruit, however, and with a whole lot of bribing, shoving and sugar, he returned to where he was supposed to be, this time safely secured.

Back outside, the Prince quietly fussed over Crowley, apologizing for the scare with fluttering hands, clearly unsure of what to do with them, or even how close to stand to her. She seemed just as insecure of how to react. It was all horribly awkward.

“Oh wow, that was a bit of a spook, eh?” Newt interjected to break up the situation. Everyone, including the guard, latched on to it.

“Why do you people have a whole stable of those things?” Crowley asked, gesticulating wildly.

“Why not? What, have you never met a horse before?”

“Never up close like that.”

He gave her a big smile.

“Ah, come on, it’s not so bad. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you all our horses are as sweet as kittens. Well, most of them. People don’t really like old Norris, you know, just because he ate a few fingers more than usual.”

She gaped at him, incredulously.

“Fi-, h-, what?! How many fingers do they usually eat?”

“One or two.”

“A day?!”

“Mister Pulsifer!”

Aziraphale looked scandalized as he chastised him, but was also unable to fully hide the amusement he felt.

“How dare you joke like that with a young lady who doesn’t know any better? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Turning to Crowley, he added:

“They don’t. They don’t eat fingers. Petrichor has never eaten a single finger, I swear; she doesn’t even bite, really.”

Newt couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. Even though Crowley looked less than pleased with being the butt of the joke, the overall mood improved greatly. They all seemed a lot less on edge.

“Really though, I didn’t expect him to be so friendly with you.” He said once his laughter died down.

“Shadwell’s usually the only one who gets the head rubbing and the face sniffing.”

When addressed with a raised eyebrow, Aziraphale clarified:

“Shadwell is the knight young Newton here works for. Actually Sir Shadwell, but nobody calls him that. I think he prefers it this way. He’s also on my mother’s council, as her military advisor.”

He paused, seeming thoughtful, as if trying to remember something.

“Say, Newton. Shadwell’s not from around these parts, correct?”

“Yes, Your Grace. I think he once told me something about coming from a village close to the border, but I don’t remember what it was called. Do you want me to ask him?”

“No, no, that’s alright, thank you…”

Aziraphale waved him away, suddenly distracted.

“I’ll seek him out myself…”

Then, looking at Crowley:

“Who knows. Depending on how close to the border he lived, maybe you two could have some things to talk about.”

The conspiratory undertone in his voice and the way her face subtly lit up did not go unnoticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, this is why I don't make any promises on update dates- sometimes I need three weeks to write the bare minimum, sometimes I knock out *looks at notes* over 5000 words in less than a week.  
> I had tons of fun writing this one! Still unsure about whether I'm getting the characters right, but I'm trying my best. I'm also really looking forward to the chapters from here on out, but I guess I'll have to update the tags again, soon. There will be OC's, not in the next few chapters, but they will come. That feels like kind of a big step, because writing about characters everyone already knows and loves is one thing, introducing new ones is another :/  
> As always, hope you had fun with this one, a big thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos, love ya <3


	8. A bad night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Bangs fists on table* ANGST, ANGST, ANGST, ANGST!  
> Aziraphale has a bad time and Crowley is difficult.
> 
> Warning: This chapter mentions death and rape. One of the characters struggles with unhealthy amounts of self doubt.

That night, like so many other nights before and after, Aziraphale lay awake, tossing and turning, grappling with his thoughts. It drove him mad, the realization of knowing so little, next to nothing, really, about a topic he felt he ought to be informed about. A whole kingdom! There was a whole kingdom, north of them, with its own language and culture and history, and he knew nothing about it! Had never thought to know about, because his tutors knew what they were doing, right, they taught him everything he needed to know…right? Right?

Additionally, there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, a thought he tried not to have, lest it grow into something he couldn’t control; and yet he could not stop picking at it, like a scab, but on his brain. In the past, whenever he had stumbled over a topic of interest but no use, something ‘a future King need not bother’’ with, finding out more in his spare time had been relatively easy. Local flora? He didn’t have to know about that, but, after a bit of research, he did! He could distinguish hiding-lucies from jester’s-caps; he knew where to find siddys-fingers and how to use fishnip seeds! Sailor’s knots? He wasn’t sure whether or not he could do them with ropes, but he had quite a bit of practice with string! Cooking? He was a noble, for goodness’ sake, a Prince, there were servants for that, but after pestering the kitchen staff for days on end, he knew how to make a bloody fine loaf of bread, if the need ever arose!

Why, then, could he not find anything more on Galdor? A travel diary, perhaps? Accounts on their flora and fauna, or their crafts, maybe, for trade? Their history and heraldry, their culture? Hell, those people supposedly possessed magic, all of them! How fascinating! Someone ought to look into that, maybe write their findings down, make a book of it, while they were at it. Alas, there was nothing. The metaphorical scab inside his skull itched, beckoned him to scratch, rip it off, let the blood it just barely held back flow freely, but there was no blood, he knew, only the question: Why?

So he left it be, pushed it down, buried his physical fingers in his thick down blanket in an attempt to stop the ones in his mind from wandering.

It was no use, anyway, to have those thoughts. They accomplished nothing, other than making him lose sleep. They would have to wait until morning (and, if he were being honest with himself, the day after and then the day after that and so on, until he either successfully banished them from his mind or they drove him to madness, whichever came first).

He turned to lay on his side and looked out the window. Aziraphale’s chambers were located on the second floor of east wing, facing outward. That, together with the palace’s placement, gave him an unencumbered view of the ocean. From his position on his bed, he could not see the land, only the night sky and the endless waves. Tonight was windy, and slightly overcast, with the occasional raindrop pattering on the glass, but he could still make out the moon, growing fuller each night, and a few stars. It looked grey, yes, but oddly pretty at the same time.

He wondered, idly, if his mother ever had nights like this. Did she toss and turn while she fought with her own mind? Were there thoughts she could not allow herself to have? Was she uncertain? Or was that a trait he had inherited from his father? There was no way to know. He loved his mother, dearly, and the one thing in life he was absolutely certain about was that she loved him, as well, but there was a distance between them. A distance he didn’t know how to cross, wasn’t even certain he was welcome to cross.

Once, years ago, over twenty years ago, in fact, as a snot-nosed little boy who still needed a wet-nurse to tuck him in at night and tell him stories until the monsters went away, he had been bawling his little eyes out, because his mother refused to see him that day. Surely, he’d been a bad boy, had done something wrong and she was angry with him, that’s why she didn’t want to have him around. Dear, sweet Elspeth, who was plump and soft and warm and always smelled a bit like root vegetables, had picked him up, then, put him on her lap and gently pressed him against her bosom, where he always felt safe and welcome, and explained it to him.

_Her Majesty’s not angry, love_ she’d told him, _she’s sad._

_She had a husband, you see, your daddy, and she loved him very, very much. More than anything else in the world – almost as much as she loves you._

She gave him a kiss on the forehead and buried her nose in his baby-curls.

_But he’s gone, now, and your mommy misses him something fierce. So much that it hurts, sometimes. You’re the only one she has left, you know._

Strangely, Aziraphale remembered everything Elspeth had said and done, back then, but his own responses were a blur in his memories. He recalled asking something along the lines of ‘why won’t she see me, then?’.

_Because you remind her so much of your daddy, my darling. That’s not a bad thing, love, and it’s not your fault. Your mommy just needs time alone._

Again, he didn’t quite remember, but he thought he had asked her where to find his father, to bring him back.

_Oh, my little dove, no. You can’t bring him back. No one can; he’s with Mordred now._

Even as a child, he had known that euphemism. He had seen the big statue of Mordred in the temple, behind the celestial pair, looming over them. The god of death. The final king. He had been too young to really grasp the concept of death, but he understood that, in the end, everyone went with Mordred and he kept them. Forever.

Another question and Elspeth took his little, chubby face between her warm, calloused hands. She wiped the tears and the snot away with a handkerchief, always so patient and gentle, and looked him deep in the eyes.

_You can be a good boy, that would make her happy. Be a good boy, be diligent and kind and don’t be naughty. That’s all you have to do. You can do that, right?_

But he couldn’t.

He tried. He tried to be a good son, to do as he was told, to make his mother happy, but he failed, all the time, over and over again. The deal with Crowley was just the culmination of all his bad traits and habits. It was only logical, after passively disappointing everyone for decades, that he would end up actively betraying the only family he had, by planning to disobey way in advance.

Maybe he should just not.

There was still time and he hadn’t really done anything yet. Nothing irreversible, at least. Maybe he should just give in. Surely Crowley could be convinced that a union between them was for the better. She would be Queen, someday, that should be worth marrying a stranger. They could even grow to like each other. From what he had seen so far, she wasn’t boring. She wasn’t dumb. She was a lot prettier than most of the girls he had seen at the ball!

An invisible hand seized his stomach and Aziraphale jumped out of bed, almost certain he was going to vomit, when he realized just what he had been thinking about. Crowley was a hostage. They gave her a room, they put her in a pretty dress, they even allowed Aziraphale to make nice with her, but that did not change the fact that she was a hostage. She was imprisoned in this palace, made helpless with bindings and guarded by armed men. Even if he could somehow get her to agree to marry him, to say the words, it would be meaningless. She had no choice! If he was willing to take her as his wife under these circumstances, then, he felt, he might just as well waltz over to the west wing and rape her right now.

He felt disgusting. He felt wretched and filthy and he hated himself.

Giving up on sleep altogether, Aziraphale washed his face in the basin on his dresser. There would be no easy solution to this, would there? Either he ended up a traitor, or a monster.

  
  


\---

  
  


When he made his way to the training ground the next day, Aziraphale felt like shit. He had ended up spending the rest of the night in the library, trying to distract himself by reading the stories of brave, gallant knights and virtuous maidens that usually calmed him, eventually switching to a bland geological survey.

The sky had continued to darken, and, by morning, a steady drizzle made everything slightly wet and uncomfortable.

Situated on the backside of the additional guard housing behind the palace, a field of trampled earth served as a space for Captain Archer to keep his men in good shape and torture the Prince with fencing lessons every other day. While Aziraphale usually avoided coming here, today, he had a mission. According to one of the maids, Her Majesty’s military advisor could be found out this way around this time of day, and, true to her words, when Aziraphale arrived, Shadwell sat on a bench under the overhanging roof of the building. A cloud of smoke from the herbs he had in a small pipe hung over his head, in just the perfect height to make the Captain’s eyes water, as he stood in front of the older man.

Aziraphale had hoped to avoid Archer, hoped that maybe he would be too busy to notice him, but the gods were apparently intent on making his life as complicated as possible. At least the Captain appeared to be having a bad time as well ( _bad thought, Aziraphale, you shouldn’t wish ill on others)_. Despite his signature, pleasant smile still being intact, it was less toothy than usual and his voice sounded slightly strained.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, _Sir_?”

The knight took a puff from his pipe and shook his head.

“Then, with all due respect, _Sir_ , I have work to do.”

“I’m nae stoppin ye.”

As much as Aziraphale was loathe to get tangled up in whatever was going on between the two men, neither of them seemed inclined to budge from their respective positions. Steeling himself mentally, he stepped into the smoky fray. For a few seconds, nothing happened, until Archer glanced to the side.

“Oh. Oh, Your Highness! What a pleasant surprise.”

He bowed and smiled, all teeth and sunshine again.

“Are you here to join us in training?”

“Ah...no, Captain, not today. I’m just, er, stretching my legs, you see, enjoying the weather.” Aziraphale said while he pulled his wet cloak tighter around his shoulders.

Not one to take no for an answer, the Captain went on.

“Are you sure I cannot convince you, Your Grace? I’m certain some exercise would do you good.”

This underhanded kind of nagging was exactly what Aziraphale had tried to avoid. His mental state was bad enough as it was, today, he didn’t need to be reminded of the many ways he failed to rise up to expectations. Before he had time to formulate some diplomatic response, though, Shadwell spoke up.

“Watch yer gob, boy, ye’re talking to the Prince.”

Both ‘boys’ were taken aback, each for their own reasons. Aziraphale and Shadwell seldom had any contact, and, if he was being honest, the Prince usually avoided the man. Not for any concrete reasons, mind, merely because he was intimidating. Being defended by him was an unexpected, yet welcome, turn of events. Still, maybe a bit of defusing the situation was in order.

“Now, now, Sir Shadwell, I’m sure the Captain’s words came from a place of caring, not of insult. Isn’t that right?”

“Of course, Your Highness! I only have the royal wellbeing in mind.”

Aziraphale forced a little smile, then looked out towards the training men.

“Wonderful. Really. Well, Captain, I would hate to keep you from your duties any longer, so…”

Faced with two people who both ranked higher than him and made it clear that they had no further interest in his presence, Archer relented and, with another nod, returned to the guards on the field.

The closest thing to silence settled between the Prince and the knight, disturbed only by the rain and the occasional shouted order from the Captain. Whatever herb Shadwell smoked, it had a resinous, earthy smell to it. They both watched the activities for several minutes, until the older man spoke up.

“What can I do for ye, _Yer Grace_?”

“Oh, erm, nothing, really, I’m just...er…” Aziraphale trailed off. He mentally kicked himself for not coming up with a good reason to approach the man beforehand.

“I, uh, I ran into young Mr. Pulsifer, yesterday. Did you know?”

“Aye.”

Not the most talkative fellow, but he already knew that.

“He’s grown quite a lot, hasn’t he? I still remember the time when he was just,” a vague gesture with his hand somewhere between his navel and his shoulders, “and now he’s a young man!”

“Aye.”

Aziraphale shuffled his feet, pushing up tiny dirt piles, then smoothing them over again, and tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth.

“We had a bit of a talk, you know?”

“Aye.”

“The topic of your origin came up, and that had me thinking. We have a...“ _(Prisoner)_ “guest, you see, from the far north. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her?”

“I’m on the council.”

Aziraphale almost bit his tongue. Of course he knew!

“Ah, yes, silly me! Of course you know. Right. Yes...So, uhm, do you…? I mean, have you…?”

Finally, Shadwell looked up at him, with an indecipherable look on his face.

“I mean, as I understood it, you used to live somewhat close to the border. Is that correct?”

“...Aye.”

“So, chances are – and correct me, if I’m wrong with this – chances are you have a bit of insight on the galdor. R-right?”

“Aye.”

“Really?”

Immediately, Aziraphale’s face lit up and he leaned down, further into Shadwell’s resinous smelling space.

“Have you met any of them, personally? Do you know their language? Or at least a few words of it? Have you heard anything about their rulers?”

The knight leaned away from the overexited Prince, and, when he recovered from the surprise, scooted away along the bench a little and made to stop his pipe again. Aziraphale waited, with baited breath, for him to knock it on the bench’s edge to get rid of the ash, then take it between his teeth and pull a little leather pouch from his vest. From anyone else, this would have been incredibly disrespectful, but for reasons not fully known to Aziraphale, even the Queen waited patiently when the man needed to sort himself.

He proceeded to pinch some of his dried, blueish-green herbs out of the pouch and carefully stuffed them into the pipe, before putting it away, then pulled out an instrument consisting of what looked like two pieces of off-white rock, one formed like a ring and one like the corresponding finger. When he rubbed the finger inside the ring with a scraping sound, it sparked, quite impressively, and lit the contents of the bowl. He put it all away, leaned back, huffed and puffed a few times and answered:

“Aye.”

When, after a few beats, no clarification followed, Aziraphale felt the need to push.

“What do you mean, ‘aye’? Aye, you speak the language? Aye, you’ve met the people?”

Another leisurely puff.

“Where’s that coming from? That _interest?_ ”

The careful enunciation of the word combined with the rolling r-sound from his accent made that last word consonant heavy and sharp-edged. Aziraphale felt the need to be careful with it, lest he cut himself.

_Oh, you know, I’m just curious._ No.

_My reasons are none of your concern, Sir._ No, no, way too aggressive.

_I just feel like I should know about our neighbours. Don’t you?_ No.

Outright lying felt wrong, but being too honest about his thoughts and doubts felt ...dangerous.

“...I think it would be a profit to us all, if I gained a better understanding of our cultural differences and similarities. It could help make our guest feel more welcome, for one. Don’t you agree?”

“...aye.”

Shadwell tilted his head and watched the grey of his smoke meld with the grey of the sky.

“Used to be, some’a them came ‘round to trade. Me mum made cider. They made wool. Good wool.”

Another puff, more smoke.

“Taught the wee ones swear words an’ songs, sometimes.”

He observed the sky some more, then gave Aziraphale a long once-over. What he was looking for, and whether or not he found it, was not clear.

“They donnae like yer type.”

“Nobles? Or Sulvanyans in general?”

“Both.”

“Ah.”

Aziraphale watched the far corner of the roof, where he could see the rainwater gathering and dripping down in regular intervals.

One, two, _drip._ One, two, _drip._ One, two, _drip._

“How do you think they’ll react, when they find out about this…? When they find out.”

“Afore the wedding or after?”

“Which would be worse?”

One, two, _drip._ One, two, _drip._

“I cannae tell.”

One, two, _drip._ One, two, _drip._ One, two, _drip._

The sudden burst of curious energy he had felt before washed away with the rain. What had he expected? For Shadwell to give him an impromptu lesson on the dos and don’ts of dealing with galdor royalty? A quick guide on how to avoid political trouble while keeping one’s conscience clean? This had been a mediocre shot, at best, from the beginning; the fact that the man was exhausting to talk to was only icing on the cake.

Said man now got up and patted off his clothes.

“I’m goin’ back inside, it’s feckin’ cold. Ye better get goin’, too, lad.”

They nodded farewell to each other and Shadwell left, while Aziraphale stayed, just a few minutes more, and watched the sky.

  
  


\---

Madame Tracy, armed with a basket full of notes and writing utensils, entered Crowley’s room around the early afternoon. With the bathing and the dressing and bringing her all her meals (because Her Majesty didn’t want any other maids to do these things, lest the gossip got out of control, and she was right, Tracy thought), the Madame spent quite a lot of time around the bastard. So much so, that she felt they had grown somewhat accustomed to each other, enough for both of them to be less on edge, at least. Where, at first, she had expected Crowley to act like a cornered cat, all hissing and spitting and claws, attacking anyone indiscriminately, her behaviour, at least around her, was more that of an old street mutt: there was a lot of growling and threatening posturing, sure, and she made it very clear that she was not happy at being handled, but she knew better than to actually draw blood. Far from the most difficult case Madame Tracy ever had to work with.

“Good afternoon, dearie! How are we feeling?”

Crowley, who stood sideways by the window, so she could both look out and not have her back to the door, shot her a look that contained only very little venom.

“Are you the only one who works in this bloody palace?”

“It does feel like that, sometimes, doesn’t it?” she answered with a smile, as she sat her basket on the table. They had since gotten Crowley to stop disassembling the furniture and added another chair. When she picked up the tray today’s lunch had been served on to place it on the dresser, she noticed the bowl with the stew was still completely untouched.

“Did someone not feel hungry, again? I know this whole new situation is probably poison on your appetite, but you do need to eat.”

Crowley crossed her arms and huffed through her nose.

“I did eat. What, do you think I stuffed the bread up my arse?”

“Language, dear. You know what I mean – you can hardly live off of bread and water alone, especially if you want to gain a bit of weight. Now come,” she patted the seat of one of the chairs, “sit with me.”

Watching, Crowley waited for Madame Tracy to sit down first, before taking the chair across from her. Smiling to herself, because she knew the girl only feigned nonchalance while observing her intently, Tracy unpacked her basket. She took her time to neatly arrange all her papers, carefully uncork her inkwell and take her pen out of its box. Finally, as she placed, then replaced and then nudged her pen ever so slightly left or right, to get it to lay _juuuust_ right, Crowley gave in.

“What’s all this about?”

“Hm? Oh, this? Well, now that you’ve had the chance to settle a bit, we’ve decided it’s about time to see how matters stand with your education.”

“The fuck is ‘we’?”

“Language, again. No young lady should use words like that, especially not one of your standing.”

The cogs visibly turned behind Crowley’s eyes and a smirk slowly but surely spread on her face.

“Words like what? Fuck?”

The smirk grew and morphed into a shit eating grin.

“Is fuck a _bad_ word? I didn’t know that. What about,” she snapped her fingers a few times, “what about arse, is that a bad fucking word, too? Aw, shit, I said it again, didn’t I? I can be so fucking stupid, sometimes.”

Madame Tracy only sat there, patiently.

“Are you done?”

“With what?”

“Trying to rile me up.”

Crowley narrowed her eyes but did not stop grinning.

“Now, why the fuck would I do that?”

As someone born without any titles or properties, who, nonetheless, spent pretty much her entire life around, and later, under, aristocracy, the woman originally known as Marjorie Potts had been under a lot of pressure to develop good people skills and a sensitive sense of empathy early on. Turns out wealth, time and inbreeding combined into dangerously fertile grounds for psychological issues. The wrong words, said at the wrong time, could easily lead to ugly results (the right words, at the right time, however, could potentially lead to a short but torrid affair. She still owned the sapphire earrings Duke Harrington had gifted her, thirty years ago. The ones that used to belong to Duchess Harrington). This was something she’d seen dozens of times before and she knew how to handle it.

“Look, you can either work with me and get this over with or keep being difficult. Either way, we’re not done until I say we are.”

Crowley leaned back, still grinning.

“I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.”

This was going to be a long afternoon.

The next hour or so consisted of Crowley doing everything in her very limited power to make Madame Tracy angry.

She got up, walked around the room, picked things up and dropped them on the floor. She answered every question with some variation of ‘I don’t know’. At some point, she found a loose thread on the wool blanket on her bed and started systematically taking it apart. Tracy knew this kind of game and she was good at it, but she had to admit, Crowley was a worthy opponent.

When the blanket was just about halfway unraveled, with the resulting string wound around the back of one of the chairs, there was a knock on the door. Grateful for the distraction, Madame Tracy got up to answer and found the Prince on the other side.

“Good afternoon, Your Highness.”

“Oh, good afternoon. I did not know you were here. Am I interrupting something?”

“No, no, Your Grace, don’t worry about it. Is there anything I can help you with?”

He looked down, then up, then down again, all while fiddling with the hem of his sleeve. The poor boy was always so nervous.

“I just thought, that, perhaps – I mean, I know the weather is not the best, today, so going out might not be all that appealing – but I thought that Crowley might appreciate a chance to stretch her legs a little, being cooped up in this room all day. I already asked for permission and found a guard to accompany us, so there’s no need to worry about that…”

She looked back to see Crowley’s reaction and was pleased to see the girl in question had dropped the rest of the blanket and watched her with big eyes. Smelling a possible incentive for good behaviour, she turned back around.

“That’s very kind of you, Your Highness, but I’m afraid Miss Crowley will have to finish the lesson we’re having before she can go anywhere.”

The telltale sound of a chair being pulled out could be heard. It felt nice to be right.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy, another one! Please don't get used to this kind of output from me :P  
> I feel like this is kind of important, at least it is to me, so even though it's in the tags, I'll say it again: There will not, I repeat, not be any actual rape in this story. No character has been or will be sexually assaulted. Talking about it, like in this chapter, is the farthest I am willing to go in this story. Maybe ever.
> 
> ___  
> Another thing, and this does not matter to the fic at all, so you don't have to read it if you don't care about personal stuff:  
> Writing Aziraphale in this chapter made me think.  
> I feel like a lot of fans identify with Aziraphale and Crowley in part because of their heavily implied mental issues and it's a well known fact that fandom spaces are home to a lot of neurodivergent people or those with mental health problems, so I thought this could be an opportunity to get something off my chest.   
> I made soup this weekend.   
> I wanted soup, but making it meant going out and buying the ingredients. I try to avoid the store, right now, because of the 'Rona, so I went to the farmer's market and that was a whole thing because of my sensory issues and the vendors want to make smalltalk, because it's their job, and I had to carry everything back, and UGH! It sucked!  
> But in the end, I had soup. It tasted great and made me feel good and the effort was worth it.  
> Right now, a lot of things suck, for a lot of people. Almost everyone has some sort of problem, and if you're already vulnerable to depression or other things in that vein, it can feel harder than ever to just...be.   
> In times like these it's easy to neglect yourself. We all need kindness and nice things, though.   
> So what I'm trying to say, with this whole wall of text, is- please do something nice for yourself. Like soup.  
> It doesn't have to be big, or useful, of productive. Make your favourite meal or use that face mask you've been saving. Maybe play that old game you used to like. Whatever. Just be kind to yourself.  
> Anyway, I'll stop now, because I feel like that weird, alternative teacher most people had at some point.  
> \---
> 
> Like always, I hope you had fun with this chapter, thank you, thank you, thank you for the kind words and kudos and take care! Love ya <3


	9. A lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn a little more about Crowley's past and the main characters get to spend some time together.
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains vague hints at child abuse/neglect.

Crowley was absolutely livid. How _dare_ the poncy little Prince show up right when she had been about to _win this?!_ Even though Madame Tracy was good enough at this game not to show any obvious, outward signs that she was losing her composure, being in a closed room together for so long worked to her disadvantage. Under different circumstances, it would probably have been too subtle to notice, but like this, the faint smell of an irate person permeated the air.

She had been close, _so close,_ to getting the other woman to lose her temper, but Aziraphale just had to show up and present her with blackmail material, didn’t he? Using her only chance to move semi-freely against her was just ruthless. But, much more importantly, and to her horror, it also revealed an unwelcome truth to Crowley: She was no longer the smartest person in the room by default. Other people knew how to play this game, as well.

Before, back “home”, things had been clear cut. Hastur and Ligur had physical control, over both her and her surroundings. They had held the keys, had access to the outside world and strength as well in body as in numbers. She had learned how to manipulate them. It may not have gained her freedom, but sometimes peace, sometimes amusement, if she managed to make them fight each other, and, sometimes, even a feeling of power. Making them lose it, driving them to rage, was not a very wise thing to do, she knew that, had felt it more than once, but at the same time, there was a sense of catharsis in forcing them to acknowledge her and causing them to feel something they didn’t want to feel.

Just like back then, she knew making Madame Tracy angry was…counterproductive, to say the least; but the whole situation grated on her nerves – the guards, the surveillance, this room, other people picking out her clothes, and the ever-looming but still unknown deadline – she needed to do something to feel in control again.

Then, this.

Maybe Madame Tracy was smarter than her, maybe she just had more experience, but either way, she had stood strong, long enough for Aziraphale to interrupt them. How much longer would it have taken to break her? She had been close, yes, but if Crowley was honest with herself (which she was only reluctantly), considering how long it took to get there, she could have had another hour ahead of her.

But that was fine.

Really.

It was fine.

It was peachy-fucking-keen.

It just meant she would have to learn. Get better, grow, adapt. She was clever enough to pick up some new tricks. She just needed to take this _minor_ (!) defeat in stride, swallow her pride, get through this…thing, this lesson, and then come up with a new strategy. Easy.

When she looked over towards the door, both Madame Tracy and Aziraphale still stood there.

“Should I…come back later, then? Or should I wait? How long do you think this is going to take, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“When we finish depends entirely on Ms. Crowley, Your Highness.” Madame Tracy answered, and, as she did so, turned around to give Crowley a smile that was, somehow, at the same time friendly and warning. The expression she got in return was more grimace than smile.

Part of Crowley’s mind noted how, in the short time she’d known the other woman, she’d never really lost that veneer of innocent sweetness, even when worried, or shocked, or, as of a few minutes ago, angry. It was incredibly subtle, and she couldn’t really make out why, but contrary to Aziraphale, whose demeanour openly displayed everything he felt, Madame Tracy had a…a sort of buffer? A sugary coat of neutrality that made it harder to tell what was going on underneath. She put that observation away, as something to be reviewed later.

“What is it even about? That lesson. Maybe it’s a topic I could help with. Only if that’s welcome, of course, I wouldn’t want to impose. Or distract. Or- oh, no, I’m doing it right now, aren’t I? I’m distracting you. I’m so sorry, I’ll just leave.”

“Don’t!”

The word was out before Crowley even realized it, and she was just as surprised as the people looking at her. She really did want him to stay, though. Both because she didn’t want to be alone with Madame Tracy and because she wanted to get out of this room as soon as possible. Speaking of, Madame Tracy’s eyes flitted from Crowley to Aziraphale and back a few times, before she came to a conclusion.

“Well, I suppose it can’t do any harm.”

Another chair was organized and the Prince took position at the table between the two women, while the guard stayed with his co-workers by the door. Once everyone was seated and she had looked over her papers, again, Madame Tracy fixed Crowley with a honeydew-smile.

“Now, let’s try this again, shall we?”

Crowley swallowed the insult she wanted to throw at her and nodded.

“You obviously speak our language, that’s good,” the pen scratched a tick on the paper “but we really need to work on those manners.” A longer note joined the first.

“Let’s see…Do you speak any other languages?”

“No.”

“Do you know how to dance? Formally, I mean?”

“Nope.”

“Do you play any instruments? Or sing?”

“Hu-unh.”

“How about more scholarly topics? History? Heraldry? Religion? Poetry?”

Each question only earned her a shake of the head.

“What _did_ they teach you in Galdor?”

Crowley lifted her feet up to the seat of the chair and rested her chin on her knees.

“Uh, nothing, technically, because I...iveneverreallybeenthere…”

Both humans blinked at her, owlishly.

“Pardon…?”

“I’ve never,” she tipped her head back, looked at the ceiling, the window, anywhere, really, but the two people at the table, and heaved a deep breath.

“I’ve never been to Galdor. I’m not really from there- I mean, I am, in a, y’know, in a broad sense...just not...yeah.”

There was a thin crack in the plaster on the ceiling, following a mostly straight line, and Crowley tried to figure out where it started, while she waited for someone else to break the silence. In the end, it was Aziraphale who did.

“But you said-”

“I didn’t.”

“I could have sworn-”

“Yeah, no, you’re wrong. It’s where my family is from and I’m their royal bastard, but I have never, ever set foot on galdor land.” If, perhaps, her voice sounded more and more sing-songy and mocking with every word, that had absolutely nothing to do with her trying to hide the way the subject matter affected her. Not like it was a sore spot or anything.

There was movement in her periphery vision, the sound of shuffling papers and the scratching sound of writing. When Madame Tracy spoke up, her voice was, thankfully, exactly as before, warm and just a little distant.

“Alright. No problem, that just means we have to do this from a different angle. I take it you lived in Sulvany, then?”

Still staring at the crack in the ceiling, Crowley shrugged.

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“We lived in a house. A big house, with a garden, and a wall, and a forest around it.”

The sound of fast paced scribbling.

“You and?”

“Me and Hastur and Ligur.”

“No servants?”

She shook her head.

“What about your mother?”

Again, she shook her head. The silence between that and the next question lasted longer than before, clearly a prompt to say more, but that was a topic she wasn’t ready to talk about. Not yet, not with these people, even under threat of being confined to her room for another day. To her credit, Madame Tracy let it go.

“Those two, are they related to you?”

Not trusting her voice, Crowley just shrugged, then, after a moment, shook her head. Wood tapped on wood. Rythmically, hypnotically, for five, ten, twenty seconds.

“No servants also means no instructors, hm? Did they teach you anything?”

“O-” she started, but found her voice breaking; she cleared her throat and tried again.

“Only what they thought I needed to know.”

“Did they think you need to know how to read and write?”

“No.”

“So we have our starting point, then.”

Between them, Aziraphale leaned forward and pressed his hands on the table.

“I can help with that!”

“That’s a generous offer, Your Highness, but it won’t be necessary-“

“Won’t it? Are you sure? I mean, yes, sure, it’s not _necessary_ , but it would be a lot more convenient if I taught her-“ he whipped his head around to address Crowley directly “ if I taught you the basics, at least.”

Sitting back again, he supported each of his claims with a raised finger.

“First of all, we won’t have to find a teacher who’s both willing to work with a, uh, non-human _and_ Crowley, in particular. No offense, but it did take you less than three days to earn a bad reputation with the guard staff.”

Crowley, who’d stopped focusing on the ceiling and now observed both Aziraphale and Madame Tracy carefully, couldn’t help but smile a little.

“I’m taking it as a compliment.”

“My point, exactly. Second, we could get started right away. Third, if I teach her she won’t have to – you won’t have to- get used to another new person.”

“I hate getting used to new people!” Crowley confirmed. She was not 100% sure why Aziraphale seemed to be so intent on being her teacher; so they could have more time to plan her escape, if he even still intended to keep his end of the bargain? So he could get out of something else? Either way, it didn’t really matter, because she really did not want to have to get a read on a new person before she figured out a new strategy.

“Fourth, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think mother wants to avoid unnecessary contact between Crowley and the public. So, er…yes.”

Way to end a strong point on insecure stammering. Crowley couldn’t help it, despite the, well, _everything_ , she found the pretty little bundle of nerves somewhat endearing. It was a shame, really, that they were who they were and met how they did, because otherwise, she would have quite liked him.

Madame Tracy considered his arguments while she cleared the table from her utensils.

“That is not my decision to make, Your Grace, but I will make sure to let Her Majesty know about your opinions. Until then, I think we are done for today.”

Within seconds, Crowley was up from her chair and in front of the door, hovering her elbow over the handle, so as not to have it make contact with her bare skin, even accidentally.

“Lesson’s done, I get to go now, right?” she asked, with a little more force than strictly needed.

It looked like Madame Tracy was about to agree, before she paused for a moment.

“Before you go, would you please untangle the mess you made with the blanket?”

“That was not-!”

“That was not what I said, before, yes.” The Madame interrupted with a firm but kind tone. When she continued, she spoke calmly and clearly and made sure to keep eye contact with Crowley.

“I’m not giving you an order. You get to leave whether you do it or not. I am asking you, nicely. Would you please tidy up the mess you made?”

This was…new. New enough that it took Crowley a heartbeat or two to really process. It had the rough shape of a power play, but it wasn’t, not really. There was not obvious advantage or disadvantage, no threat or goal, just…please. Madame Tracy stood her ground, merely holding her gaze and smiling. Deciding to listen to her gut feeling in this case, Crowley stepped past the confused Aziraphale and undid the half-destroyed blanket from the chair. It took a few minutes and when she was done, Madame Tracy offered her basket to put the woolly mess into.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever, leave me alone. Are you coming, Aziraphale?”

Together, Crowley and Aziraphale, who looked about as confused as she felt, left the room.

\---

“Ta- dah!”

Aziraphale was practically bursting with giddy excitement as he opened the door to the library. Gone was the fatigue from the sleepless night, nearly forgotten were the unpleasant morning and the bewildering revelations – they were in his realm, now.

Even though people (or, more precisely, Captain Archer and the council) liked to accuse him of procrastinating on more important tasks, or simply wasting time, by whiling away the hours with frivolous tales and useless information, he never felt quite as at home anywhere in the palace as in the library.

Contrary to the Queen’s personal library, this, more or less, public one, was situated in the west wing, directly in the bend where the wing jutted out of the central main building, so that the room itself was L-shaped. Both outward facing walls sported several large windows, one side allowing a view of the colourful hustle and bustle to the north of the palace and the other showing the grassland and the ocean beyond it, to the west.

Rivalling the laundry room in floor space as well as in height, the library housed dozens of massive, wooden shelves, every last one of which was filled to capacity with books in all shapes and sizes, a central study area with several tables and chairs and a balcony that ran along the entire circumference of the room, about halfway up, accessible via spiral staircase in each corner. Every available surface was decorated with portraits, some massive, and some barely larger than the palm of a grown man’s hand.

The library was truly beautiful, and while Aziraphale enjoyed having it for himself, most of the time, it was also a right shame that it went so underappreciated. All the better that he now had an apprentice to teach! Her Majesty was a sensible woman, so there was no doubt she would agree to his reasoning. It was only logical for Aziraphale to be Crowley’s teacher! And what a teacher he would be! It was his obligation, no, his responsibility, nay, his holy duty, to open the poor girl’s eyes to the wondrous world of literature! Whatever it would take, however long it would take, no matter how many hours he would have to spend in his beloved library – some sacrifices were worth it.

He turned around to see both Crowley and the guard still standing by the door, the former looking slightly lost and the latter bored.

“Don’t be shy, come in! Come in!” he called as he waved her closer.

“It’s impressive, I know. You’ve probably never seen so many books before, have you?”

She observed her surroundings dubiously.

“I have seen…books. I had one, y’know.”

“What was it about?”

Obviously caught off guard by the question, Crowley hesitated and stammered a bit before answering.

“N-, uh…P-plant stuff, I guess. It had, uh…” she mimed the motion of turning pages with her hands “pictures of flowers and such.”

“Wait here!”

Before Crowley could say anything else, Aziraphale was gone, making his way to a specific shelf, very deliberately. He knew this room like the back of his hand. After carefully picking out three of his own favourite books (In this subsection, at least), he returned to the central point of the library, less than two minutes later.

“Look, here, look! You’ll love these.”

Grinning, he opened the first one up, looked for an especially pretty illustration and shoved it into Crowley’s hands, giving an excited little wiggle as she took it. The page he’d landed on described pick-me-ups, darling little, golden yellow flowers that could be used to make tea or infuse alcohol and were said to help with listlessness. The artist had done a great job of capturing even the most delicate details and subtle colour variations.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

She nodded, speechless, staring at the little treasure in her hands.

“And if you can’t find what you’re looking for in there, we also have this one,” he held up one of the books, a thick tome bound in green leather “it’s all about crops. Every fruit and vegetable known to grow in this kingdom; and this one,” he presented the other book, which was just as thick as the one before, but taller and bound in blue fabric, its edges gilded “about ornamental plants. According to this, there are places where they managed to grow green roses! And carnations as big as your head! Can you imagine?”

Crowley did not answer. Aziraphale did not mind, though, as her eyes were glued to a two-page spread of blushing-maidens. He, too, had often marvelled at that masterpiece in particular. The unknown artist had done their very best to depict their objects of study not just as a singular, neutral specimen, but as part of a living landscape. Looking at the picture, one could have felt like laying, belly-down, in the grass, the bell-shaped, hanging heads of the flowers at eye level. The bright sky blue that faded into pale violet, like their titular blush, contrasted with the varying shades of green around them, without being dissonant. Every time he thought he knew every single detail on these pages, another hidden gem caught his eye, like a bug crawling on the floor, or a mouse’s tail poking through between two blades of grass.

Seeing someone else being as enraptured with this ‘silly drawing’ (not his words) as he tended to be, made him feel…understood, somehow.

He wiggled his fingers at the edge of the book to get Crowley’s attention.

“You could borrow it, if you want.”

When she tore her gaze from the page to look at him, her eyes were, for once, completely unguarded and it hit him, just how bright and expressive they were.

“Really?”

Funny, how that went. How he could see her as a poor, scared, little girl first, a somewhat sympathetic menace second and then a kindred spirit in the making, in less than a week, too. _Almost as if she was whole person, with feelings and facets to her character, same as him._ Thinking of those facets, though, he felt the need to clarify some things, so he placed his hand, palm down and fingers spread out, on the page Crowley still held open.

“Only if you promise me that you will. Not. Damage it. Whatever sick pleasure you seem to derive from destroying things is not worth how cross I will be with you, if you damage this or any other of these books. Understood?”

“…uh, yes…?”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Marvellous!”

Aziraphale clapped his hands, once, smiling and crinkling his nose in what he hoped was an encouraging way. At least Crowley moved carefully when she closed the book and put it down.

“What other kinds of books would you like to see?”

“What other kinds are there?” she asked, dubiously.

Aziraphale wiggled again, he couldn’t help it.

“So glad you asked! We have works on any-, no, er…most….many topics you can imagine. Do you want a tour?”

So, the two (or rather, three of them; the guard made sure to stay within sight, but always a few steps away from them) moved through the whole library, with Aziraphale explaining the different sections and occasionally pulling a tome from the shelf, to give examples. The palace’s collection held works on topics ranging from biology to history, law, strategy, religion and mythology, poetry, plays, philosophy, medicine, personal diaries and more. Some of them took up merely one row in one shelf, like philosophy, while others, like law, with the legal texts themselves, the addenda, the discussions and the precedents, filled several shelves.

When they stood on the balcony overlooking the whole room, Crowley stopped in front of one of the largest portraits.

“Who are all these people?” she asked, scrutinizing the one in front of her with distaste. It displayed a man, tall, blonde, broad-shouldered and clad in old-fashioned splendid armour. He held a truly massive sword, distorted, due to the scale of the portrait, to be almost as long as Aziraphale was tall, in his right hand; in his left, he held his helmet, shaped to resemble the head of an eagle and heavily ornamented in gold, same as his breastplate.

“Most of them are relatives of mine…” Aziraphale answered as he stepped closer to the frame. Once he found, what he was looking for, he pointed it out for Crowley to see.

“There’s usually a plaque, see, with the names of the people depicted. Another reason to learn how to read. It says here: Prince Eufrasio the Swift, so that means…” he racked his brain for what he knew about that name, “he’s my great-great uncle, I believe.”

Crowley scoffed.

“He looks like an arsehole.”

“Crowley!”

“He does! Don’t tell me he doesn’t. With his big knife and the glitzy, shiny metal suit; how do you people even do that? How can you make something that dangerous look so ridiculous?”

Ridiculous was just about the last thing Aziraphale would call Eufrasio, or any of his dead relatives, for that matter. Impressive was more like it. Imposing. Regal.

“It’s traditional, Crowley. The armour is supposed to show wealth and military prowess.”

“…wealth of bad taste, perhaps…”

“Crowley.”

She let it go, then, and instead went to pick out several books to borrow, before she had to return to her room. In the end, she left with the one Aziraphale had handed to her, one which described all manner of fish that could be found in the area, and a collection of poetry which had been decorated without any reference to the words within it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...was that a reveal? With Crowley's past? I'm not sure, but if there's one thing I learned from DMing, it's that, sometimes, when I think I'm being very obvious, I'm actually not. And the other way around. This chapter was a bit of a struggle, for me, but also necessary, so I'm glad I'm done ^^
> 
> Maybe you've noticed that I stopped responding to individual comments for a few chapters and then started, again. That's not because I don't read them, or anything, trust me, I do. I'm just also very insecure, because this is my first fic, and I don't really have the hang of 'proper comment etiquette', yet. 
> 
> As always, hope you had fun, thank you for your feedback, luv ya <3


	10. An emergency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little time skip, and then we get into drama : )
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains blood.

The next two weeks went by in the blink of an eye, it seemed.

Almost, sort of, very early spring turned into actual early spring, and all around, the world, tentatively, started to bloom. Some early songbirds returned and made their nests in trees that wore hard little spuds where their leaves would soon be, and their excited chirping made just about everyone’s morning a little brighter. Those of the servants who worked with the livestock prepared for the birthing season to come – three sows were pregnant, same as two goats, two cows, one mule and one of the draft mares. Good prospects in theory, as that meant they needed to buy in less, but also potentially very stressful. None of the animals cared though. They were happy and heavy and fat, and those that had been pregnant before looked forward to having young again.

Down in the city, the fishermen found the first specimen of certain kinds of crab and fish in their nets again, some bluehousers, eels, cod, even a smooth-hound.

_(“S-Smo…Smoth…und. Smothund!” Crowley read aloud from the fish-book._

_The illustration belonging to that word was one of her favourites, because the creature looked all slick and dangerous but then had the dopiest, most darling little face. It was mostly the silly doe-eyes._

“ _Almost,” Aziraphale corrected, patiently. “There are two ‘o’s here, see. Do you remember what sound two ‘o’s make?”_

_She tapped the nail of her left index finger against one of her canines while she thought. It was technically a ‘bad habit’, and_ he _would have gotten a firm smack on the hand for that, as a boy, but Aziraphale was just glad that Crowley felt safe enough around him, now, to let little mannerisms like that shine through._

“… _like in ‘loose’?”_

“ _Correct! So, you have ‘smooth’, and then: H O U N D.”_

“ _Smooth…h-hound…Smoothhound? But it’s a fish!”)_

On dry land, the girls and unmarried young women kept a sharp eye out for every patch of grass or dirt that could grow flowers, as there was a local superstition, it’s ancient origins long since irrelevant and forgotten, that the type and colour of the first bloom a girl saw in the new year had special meaning for her future in love. Similarly, the young, unmarried men carefully observed their surroundings for hints at their future in love, as well, only, higher above the ground, with a focus for more immediate _, tangible_ details. Oh, those tangible details…

All of them, the men and the women, the old and the young ones, looked forward to the nuptey, the annual spring festival. While the _nuptiarum deum_ , as was its official name, was an important religious holiday, and most certainly not an excuse for frivolities and excess, people used it as exactly that. It was a whole week of music and laughter and games and food, celebrating that winter was finally over for good. Nobles and clergy all over the kingdom either looked away or encouraged and even participated in the festivities – after all, the nuptey was also considered the best time for match making. The best time for all unions and matches, for that matter, so much so that some people waited all year to sign contracts or close deals.

Even though the concrete date for the festival was yet unknown – several conditions needed to be met and interpreted by important religious figures, first; star signs, moon phases, the migratory patterns of a certain kind of bird – it was obviously not far off.

  
  


Up in the palace, Aziraphale and Crowley made quick progress with her education. Marcella had agreed to let her son teach, just as he had suspected, as long as his other duties didn't suffer, and Crowley turned out to be a quick study. Yes, she could be horribly contrarian and downright standoffish, but Aziraphale found that being patient and gentle and keeping her occupied seemed to work quite well. Careful questioning revealed to him that she a) knew little more about the customs and systems of Galdor than he did, b) didn’t even speak her own native language, and c) hated talking about these things. Their hope for freeing her from both her literal and metaphorical chains remained slim like that, but Aziraphale none the less scoured the library for something, anything that might help.

Some humans supposedly wielded magic, at least a form of it. Alchemists and physicians made use of rituals and “arcane methods” from time to time. The line between midwives, wet-nurses and witches was sometimes blurry, especially in more rural areas, according to rumours he’d heard. Hell, he himself had found charms and warding signs in the palace, before, little protective measures, probably put there by staff members. The guard was supposed to protect them from physical danger, and the gods from everything else, but that apparently didn’t stop people from using their own little pieces of folk-magic. None of that featured in the library's collection, though.

One lucky break among all this was that Sir Shadwell had, for some reason, decided that his squire should be the one to escort Crowley to her lessons in the library, and back. As a knight’s squire, Newt technically ranked higher in the military hierarchy than the guards, so there was no official reason for anyone to object to that arrangement. As Captain Archer correctly pointed out, though, the boy had absolutely no combat experience and was more likely to hurt himself, when wielding a sword, than his opponent. Nonetheless, Her Majesty had the last word in this conflict, and she decided in favour of her knight, under the condition that Newt be armed with an iron chain, as his duty was “after all, to restrain, not kill” Crowley.

Having Newt around, instead of a guard, meant that the two of them could speak, if not fully open, at least less controlled. Newton, in turn, had soon found an advantage for himself in this new duty of his. Escorting Crowley meant that he now had between one and two hours a day in the library, and His Highness not only allowed, but encouraged him to study in that time, himself. More important, though, was the discovery he had made about a week in. If he went to tend to Norris right after bringing Crowley back to her room, the horse seemed to be easier to handle. The day after observing this, he asked Crowley to hold on to a handkerchief for him while she studied, and, lo and behold, the horse loved it! So, from then on, (after explaining that it was not for him, he wasn’t a creep, it was for the horse) Newt got a handkerchief smelling of galdor bastard each day, and it made dealing with the stallion so much easier.

One day, after the usual morning routine of Madame Tracy waking her up and bringing her a breakfast of which she could only eat half, being dressed and picked up and _coincidentally_ running into Captain Archer in the hallway, the three of them sat in the central study area of the library. While Newt busied himself with a treatise on efficient husbandry, Aziraphale tried to get Crowley to read a text aloud. Crowley, on the other hand, tried very hard not to throw up. She had woken up with a headache in the middle of the night, a headache which had only grown worse and worse with each passing hour.

The rays of sunshine stabbing in through the large windows only added to the pain behind her eyes. The skin under her bindings was red, and angry and itchy. The odour wafting over from Aziraphale’s tea agitated her (even more than usual) sensitive sense of smell. All in all, a miserable situation, that made her want to curl up into a ball somewhere cool and dusky, just shut herself away from the world until the nausea and the pain went away. Unfortunately for her, Aziraphale seemed intent on going through with the day’s lesson anyway.

He sat next to her (too close, too warm, loud, too... _smell)_ , completely oblivious to her issues. To be fair, she had not said anything and did not plan to, either – how she felt was none of his business – but his insistence on her progress drove her even more insane than the day in general already did.

“Come on, Crowley, next paragraph, please. You know most of these words.” he said, his finger on the page, looking at her expectantly. She took a deep breath to settle her stomach and immediately regretted it when she caught a nose full of Aziraphale’s soap? Perfume? Whatever it was, it smelled heavy and sweet, overwhelmingly so. It took all she had not to gag. Instead, she clenched her eyes shut and buried her face in her hands, just to escape the light for a second.

Aziraphale shifted in his seat and his voice sounded concerned when he spoke next.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” came the muffled answer from behind Crowley’s hands.

A short pause, after which Aziraphale’s voice sounded closer – too close.

“Are you quite sure? You’ve been awfully pale and quiet all morning.”

_Ah, shit, so he_ had _noticed._

Crowley sat back up straight again.

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure, I’m fine. Let’s just...let’s finish this.”

Newt and Aziraphale exchanged a silent glance, before the latter looked back and raised his towards Crowley’s face, presumably to feel her skin. That sweet smell became more intense the closer his wrist came to her nose and, overwhelmed, Crowley’s instincts took over for a second. She pulled back, lashed out and swatted his hand away.

A loud slap, followed by silence.

Afterwards, Newt was the first to move again, putting down the book and moving between them, keeping his eyes on the door all the while. There was a slight panic in his face.

“I think we are done here for today,” he said to Crowley, and then, turning to Aziraphale “if you don’t mind, Your Highness, I would tidy up here after bringing Crowley back to her room.”

Aziraphale, clutching his hands and staring at him, shocked, took a few moments to reply. When he did, he shook his head and said “N-No, that’s fine...I’ll do that...”

Without waiting any further, Newt grabbed Crowley by the arm and dragged her along, out of the library and towards her room. The sudden movement caused her to see black and feel dizzy for a short while, so she had no choice but to follow, blindly, until about halfway to their goal. Once she had caught herself enough, she stopped and dug in her heels.

“What the-? Let go of me! Now!”

Newt stopped, reluctantly, and let go of Crowley. She took a step back and leaned against the nearest wall to catch her breath.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, once she felt halfway stable again.

“With me?” he started, then flinched and looked around, before stepping closer to her and speaking in a lower tone of voice.

“What’s wrong with you? You slapped the Prince!”

“I did not-”

“It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do it hard, or on purpose, or anything! You can’t just- it- People have been whipped for touching royalty without permission! Aziraphale may be a nice person and let you get away with a lot of back talking and stuff, but this is...different. This is serious. I won’t tell anyone, and I don’t think he will, but you better apologize tomorrow.”

While he had spoken, Crowley had taken a few steps away from him, as far as she could to get away from his smell, because, even though he wore no strong scents, the usually unassuming fragrance he gave off was too much in her current state. Now, she crossed her arms, petulantly.

“ _He_ wanted to touch _me...”_

“That doesn’t really matter. Just- Let’s just get you back to your room.”

  
  


\- - -

  
  


A sharp poke in the stomach ripped Aziraphale from his melancholy.

“If this were a real sword, you’d be dead now” Captain Archer proclaimed, waving the wooden training sword around.

“With all due respect, Your Highness, your stance is completely off, your defence is wide open and I can not even guess as to where your head is right now. Please focus.”

Aziraphale shook his head and half-heartedly assumed the basic defensive position he’d been taught, only for the Captain to correct his stance by prodding at his feet, arms and midsection with the tip of the wooden sword. It was true, his mind was preoccupied, although it wasn’t as far away as it usually was, only about a couple of minutes and a few flights of stairs from the rest of him. It wasn’t so much Crowley swatting at him that distracted him, although, yes, he was concerned about that. However, Newton’s reaction took of much more of his thought process. Had the boy been trying to protect Aziraphale from Crowley, or the other way around? Did Newt think him weak enough to need protection in that situation or ill-tempered enough to get angry over an honest mistake? Either option felt bad. He would ha-

_Smack_!

The training sword hit him on the upper right arm, hard enough to make him drop his own.

“Focus, Your Highness, focus!”

Wincing and rubbing his arm, Aziraphale picked the wooden weapon up again. He sighed when he realized just how muddy the ground, and, consequently, his sword and then his hand, was. Even though the weather had gradually become warmer and drier in the last few weeks, the earth on the training ground was too firm for water to drain from it and lay in the shadow of the guard house one half of the day, and the shadow of the wall the other half. He would have to take a long, hot bath after this.

“Say, Captain...” Aziraphale started.

“Yes, Your Grace?”

Opening up to handsome, confident Gabriel Archer felt, well, counter-intuitive to Aziraphale, but if Newt indeed thought he was prone to anger, getting an honest answer from him would be unlikely.

“Do you think, that, erm...” he wiped his muddy hand on the simple linen breeches he wore for training “Are people afraid of me?”

The Captain regarded him with an unreadable expression.

“They should be.”

“They should?”

Archer rested his left hand on his hip and the other on the pommel of the sword sticking upright in the dirt, striking a pose that would be right at home in one of the portraits lining the walls of the library. “Of course they should, you are royalty, after all. People ought to fear your wrath. Respect your authority, crave your approval.”

Mentally, Aziraphale compared the both of them – tall, good-looking, imposing Captain Archer versus his soft, timid, indulgent self.

“I’m not sure if I can pull off wrath and authority,” Aziraphale admitted weakly. “If I’m honest, I don’t even think I want to. I’d rather be liked. Can’t a King just be liked?”

He was doing it again, he knew it, trying to avoid a problem instead of pulling through and growing from it, and the Captain’s annoyed (or disappointed, he couldn’t really tell) sigh made him feel even more ashamed of his own weakness.

“This kingdom needs a strong, determined leader.” said Archer, more to himself than to Aziraphale, looking off into the distance. “Someone who does what needs to be done, even if it’s uncomfortable, or hard.”

He appeared lost in thought for a few heartbeats, before shaking his head and raising his sword again.

“Anyway… Middle iron door, Your Highness, and do it right this time, please.”

  
  


\- - -

The rest of the day went by without any significant events happening. Aziraphale distracted himself with stories, Crowley fought with Madame Tracy, Newton endured his knight and said knight’s horse, and Queen Marcella dealt with correspondences. The sun went down in the west. The songbirds went to sleep. The nocturnal birds of prey woke. One of the cats squatting in the cow shed yowled and caterwauled, trying to attract a mate.

North of Bluharbor, about an hour, hour and a half with a swift horse travelling at full speed, a building, big for a hut, small for a house, with a large garden full of vegetables and herbs, stood, surrounded by trees, just off the main road. The little house was just far away enough from everyone else for its occupants to be left alone, but close enough to the next village, Tadfield, to visit it, should they crave the company. The big hut had a little lean to for a donkey and several chickens to one side, and an overhanging roof that protected a simple gig from direct weather on the other side.

Up on the second floor, under the roof, Anathema Device slept with the blinds open, letting in the light of the full moon and the spiders. The air still got bitterly cold at night, but Anathema had a sheep skin in her bed that kept her cozy. Cozy was the best word to describe her room in general. A bed, a closet, a table and a bookshelve took up most of the floorspace, with a simple, well worn carpet underneath. Dried herbs and flowers hung from the ceiling and all manner of symbols and charms, some decorative, some protective, grazed the walls.

She slept, soundly and peacefully, until a noise from the floor below, a noise that didn't fit into the symphony of the night outside, woke her. She blinked, blearily and still half asleep, no really knowing why she was awake, until a similar noise sounded again, presumably from the kitchen. Yawning and stretching, Anathema slowly rose from her bed. A look out of he window – judging from the position of the moon, it was probably already a few hours after midnight, still three or four hours to sunrise.

In her long, oversized nightgown and with bare feet, the young girl traipsed through the hut, over carpets and wooden stairs, until she reached the kitchen. As suspected, Agnes puttering about had been what woke her.

Anathema stopped in the door, leaned on the frame and rubbed her eyes. “Grandma? What are you doing?”

Agnes gave her a friendly little smile, but otherwise kept at what she had been doing before.

“I'll be needed in the capitol today.”

“For what?”

That made Agnes stop, cross her arms and regard the supplies she'd gathered so far.

“I'm not sure, yet...”she murmured. “It will be important...someone will be in pain...”

Anathema watched her grandmother silently and listened to her mutterings. When the old woman stopped talking and proceeded to pack, she spoke up again.

“Can I come, too?”

Again, Agnes stopped, this time staring off into the middle distance with unfocused eyes for several heartbeats, before answering. “Yes. Go, get dressed, then be a dear and prepare the gig. We need to leave in an hour if we want to be on time.”

  
  


\- - -

  
  


In the morning, Madame Tracy made her way to Crowley's room, already behind on her entire schedule, because Lord Derry had deemed it necessary to have an important report for that morning’s meeting delivered just an hour before. Whether the report had genuinely taken that long, or the minister just enjoyed asserting his influence by making everyone else’s life more complicated, she didn’t know. Anyway, she was armed with a tray that carried a cup of fresh milk, some bread, a pear, and a steaming bowl of oatmeal, hoping against better judgement that maybe this day would be the day when the girl ate her whole meal. She'd tried fried eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, plain oatmeal, oatmeal sweetened with honey or fruit, respectively, even cold cuts. No matter what she did, Crowley never ate more than the bread served beside the meal and maybe the fruit. It drove her mad.

Despite that, she still greeted the guards and young Newton (who of course had to be early when she was late) with a smile and entered the room confidently.

“Good morning!” she trilled, setting the tray down and walking over to open the curtains.

“Rise and shine, deary.”

Crowley neither rose nor shone. Instead she stayed where she was, with her head under the pillow, clutching the fabric tight and pressing it down with a white-knuckled grip. Something about that sight (and the unusual smell lingering in the room) made the hairs on the back of Madame Tracy's neck stand up. She approached the bed, still keeping her voice cheerful and friendly.

“It's time to get up, darling.”

The reply from under the pillow could barely be heard, but sounded somewhat like 'go away'.

“None of that, now, it’s time for breakfast” she insisted, tugging on the blanket, revealing – it took her a moment to fully parse what she revealed.

Red.

Red, soaking the sheets, soaking the nightgown and smeared on the skinny legs.

The lingering smell intensified, revealed for what it was: menstrual blood.

Crowley curled further in on herself, showing her pale, clammy face. The poor girl was shivering.

Madame Tracy dropped the blanket and ran out of the room.

\- - -

  
  


Several things happened in quick succession.

First, Newt was tasked with fetching Master Sanford, immediately.1

\- - -

Concurrently, Madame Tracy burst into the ongoing council meeting, interrupting Lord Sandalphon Derry mid-sentence. As the Queen’s maid in waiting of many years, Madame Tracy had long earned the right to demand Her Majesty’s undivided attention whenever she saw fit, so none of the Lords and Ladies present objected aloud. Lady Uriel DaSanti, the minister of commerce, and Lady Michael Yeardly, the minister of justice, paid the maid no mind, in fact treating the disruption like nothing more than an unusually long pause in the minister of the internal’s sentence.

Marcella listened intently, as Madame Tracy whispered in her ear; that the bastard lay bleeding from the nether regions, that she was pale and shivering and needed the attention of a midwife immediately.

Staring ahead while listening intently, the Queen pondered the information for several heartbeats. Not moving her head, she asked. “Sanford…?”

“Is informed, Your Majesty.” Tracy replied, still whispering. “Can he really help, though? Does he know midwifery?”

An almost imperceptible shake of Marcella’s head. Over the years, Madame Tracy had learned to recognize the subtle signs of tension the Queen displayed at that moment.

The sharper than usual line of her jaw. Touching the tips of her thumb and her forefinger together, repeatedly. The fine lines in the corners of her eyes deepening.

Finally, she made a decision.

“Sir Shadwell.”

The man, sitting to her right, diagonally, raised his head and his eyebrows.

“Aye?”

“I need you to leave for Tadfield. Right now. Fetch Nutter and bring her here as fast as you can.”

Shadwell, usually doing everything in his own time, rose from his seat mid sentence, and was halfway out the door when when the sentence was over.

Uncertain silence lingered in the room, before Her Majesty gestured toward her minister.

“Continue, Lord Derry.”

  
  


\- - -

  
  


Aziraphale arrived at the entrance to Crowley’s room, out of breath and panting. He had been sitting in the library, pondering over how to approach the lingering questions from the day before sensibly, when Newton had run in, telling him there was an emergency.

He grabbed on of the guards by the wrist. “What’s going on? How bad is it?”

The man gave him an uncertain half-smile.

“Afraid I don’t know, Your Grace. The leech just went in.”

Aziraphale let go. Reached for the door. Pulled back. Rubbed his hands over his face.

“I knew something was off, I’ve seen it! You heard me yesterday, didn’t you? I said she looked pale!”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Newton replied.

Aziraphale started pacing. Should he have taken the signs more seriously the day before? Should he have gotten someone to look over her? Had he been so preoccupied with his own problems that he had missed something? Escape plans or not, he felt that Crowley was his responsibility, to a certain extend.

A shout from behind the door ripped him out of those thoughts.

Shortly after, Master Sanford stumbled out of the room, swearing and clutching a piece of fabric to the side of his mouth.

“Ahh, shit, shit, shit! Fuck...”

Four pairs of eyes watched him lift the fabric from his face and inspect the bloodstains on it, then pressing it back on. He only realized the company he was in, afterwards.

“Oh, eh, greetings! Greetings...” he said with a loose wave of the hand.

“What happened?”

“Nothing bad, she just” he vaguely imitated a swiping motion with his left “got me. Got lucky. Doesn’t wanna be touched, than one.”

Aziraphale took a step closer.

“What about her, what’s wrong with her?”

Sanford shrugged.

“Beats me. … Ha! Literally.”

He smirked a lopsided grin at Aziraphale, who did not find the pun the least bit funny, and continued.

“I’m a physician, not a medium- can’t tell you much, if I don’t get to examine my patient. She’s bleeding. A lot more than I am. Probably a problem around the, uh...” a general motion at hip height “female parts. Like I said, though, she doesn’t let me touch her, so we’ll either have to wait until she calms down, or restrain her.”

“Or,” an authoritative, female voice sounded from the side, “you let me try.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  1. Master Sanford was the royal family’s personal physician. He’d started out rather unconventionally for a man in that position, as a cobbler’s son. With 14, he had lied about his age to join the navy, and while he had been terrible at sailing, he had turned out to be exceptionally skilled at mending bones and suturing cuts. Ten years later, still a young man and an accomplished surgeon on top, he’d left the navy and used his earnings to pursue an education, making a name for himself as an eccentric luminary of the medical field. Coming to be employed by the royal family turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him, as it gave him the time, resources and freedom to indulge in his own research. The man was in his mid forties, ostensibly his best years, but, due to the fact that he liked to test his experiments on himself, looked ten years his own senior.)




**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter Agnes!
> 
> I wrote about half of this chapter and then got stuck writing and deleting and writing and deleting the same paragraph over and over again, until I just decided to delete all of it and start over. Then I wrote like 2000 words in day :P
> 
> Very special thanks to AJ Constantine for helping me sort my thoughts over on dicord! Check out her story 'Cinders bound by Golden Crown', it's great :)
> 
> As always, a big thank you to everyone leaving kudos and comments, take care, love ya <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agnes does her thing : D
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains blood and a child with a learning disability gets called 'slow"  
> Additionally, I am not a medical professional - all the plants in this chapter are either from google or completely made up, just like any treatment anyone receives!

Sir Shadwell had barely left the gates of the palace behind, when he almost rode into the old mule pulling Agnes’ gig along. He knew enough of the woman not to question her serendipitous presence and simply guided her inside, to Madame Tracy, who had been just about to scold him for his tardiness, until she’ seen the midwife behind him.

Agnes had left neither of them time to ponder, however. There was a patient to treat, after all.

\- - -

“And who a- Mistress Nutter?” Master Sanford’s eyes threatened to fall from his head, so wide were they when he spotted the older woman Madame Tracy brought along.

Aziraphale had never seen her before. From the looks of her, she must have been between fifty and sixty years old, with deep wrinkles in her round face, mostly around the eyes and mouth, yet still sporting thick, long, chestnut hair. The clothes she wore were simple, but appeared well made. Beside and slightly behind her was a girl, a woman in the right light, carrying a large canvas bag in both arms.

“In the flesh. I suppose I’m needed in there?” she asked, pointing behind the physician. He nodded.

“What, exactly, am I dealing with?”

“Er...”

Master Sanford shook himself, then straightened up and put his bloody handkerchief away. The cut on his lip was still shiny and slightly wet, but it had stopped dripping.

“Woman in her twenties. Found bleeding profusely. Haven’t gotten a good look, yet, but it appears to be, er...womanly blood. She’s conscious, and lucid enough to speak, but, well,“ he pointed to the swollen side of his lower lip where a scab started forming “easily aggravated.”

She scoffed. “You’re easily aggravating. Go, get out of my way, let me handle this.”

All of them, the physician, the Prince, the guards and the squire, moved to let her through. The sheer confidence she exuded just made their feet work before their brains caught up.

She walked past them, knocked before opening the door, opened it and then stopped, barely a whole step inside, still holding onto the doorknob, before taking the same step backward and closing the door again. She blinked, once, twice, three times, then turned and addressed the hallway in general.

“Are my eyes going bad, or is that a galdori?”

“Yes! I mean, no, I mean-” in his haste, Aziraphale stumbled over his own tongue, again. “I don’t know about your eyes, but she’s- is that the correct term, galdori? She’s one of them. Is that a problem? Can you still help her? She’s not dangerous, if that’s what you’re worried about, never attacked anyone! Th-The scratch was an accident, I’m sure! Please-”

“Stop.”

Again, her voice made him instinctively obey. She swiftly crossed the two steps of distance between them and looked him directly in the eyes; hers were a deep, warm brown.

“Stand up straight, there’s a boy. Lower your shoulders. Take a deep breath. In...out. Good. Feeling better?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“It’s going to be alright. I’m an expert. Trust me. I just need to know what I’m dealing with before I can fix it and I need you to try and stay calm. Can you do that?”

He took another deep breath and genuinely thought about his answer. Something about Mistress Nutter told him not to just say yes, as he would have usually done. Eventually, he nodded.

“Good.”

She considered him with a thoughtful look for a few seconds longer, then went and reached for the bag the girl carried. She proceeded to pull a leather bundle out of it and hand it to the girl.

“I knew I packed this for a reason...Go and boil some water for me. Enough to make a brew and clean up, rather too much than too little.” Turning back around towards Aziraphale, she added “Anathema knows what to do, but you have to show her the way to the kitchen. You can do that.”

He nodded again, eagerly this time, then turned and walked on ahead. The girl, Anathema, kept pace with him, and they reached the kitchens in a few, silent minutes.

\- - -

The kitchens were moderately busy around this time of day, with breakfast already over and dinner still hours away. Only the royal family took three hot meals in a day, everyone else had a simple, cold lunch. Even so, people were busy. There was an enormous amount of dough rising, waiting to be made into fresh bread in the evening, a cow chuck slow roasting in the oven and a kettle of soup lowly boiling over one of several fires. Those of the staff that were not currently preparing food were washing the seemingly infinite amount of dirty dishes a household of Fellwind Palace’s size constantly produced. No one really paid attention to the two of them entering.

Anathema stopped the nearest errand boy.

“You! You have a well in here, right? Or a cistern?”

The boy blinked at the assertive stranger, slack mouthed. If Aziraphale remembered correctly, the little one was one of Mrs. Colby’s kids; Edward? Edwin? Something with an ‘e’. Mrs. Colby was the cellarer, hard-working and bright, but for some reason all of her children were a little slow, in growth and in mind. Poor things were good workers, but easily overwhelmed.

“It’s alright, Edward,” Aziraphale assured from behind Anathema.

The Colby boy’s eyes widened even more when he realized he was in the presence of royalty and he attempted a clumsy bow.

“I’m Edgar...” he corrected with a mumble.

“I’m sorry. Edgar. Please show us where you fetch the water.”

Young Edgar lead them to a corner of the kitchens where a hole that opened to the cistern had been sectioned off, with a wall that reached about hip height, and then went back to his duties. Anathema untangled the leather bundle she held, revealing it to be a pouch, large enough to comfortable fit a whole chicken inside, either made from from one single piece without seams or crafted so that the seems were not visible. She shoved it into Aziraphale’s hands and he could feel it being thin and pliable.

“Hold this open.”

He did not understand but still did as told. Although the precocious girl’s aura was still a far cry from Mistress Nutter’s, they were obviously related, or otherwise spent a lot of time together, as Anathema demanded quite a bit of respect, herself.

“...alright. Why though?”

“So I can pour water in. To heat it.” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, while first dropping the nearby bucket into the cistern below and then hauling it up again.

Aziraphale rubbed the pouch’s material between his fingers. He couldn’t tell what animal it came from, but it was obviously of a high quality.

“...to heat it. In this? We do have pots and pans and kettles here, you can use them. No need to ruin perfectly fine leather.”

Once the full bucket was back in the kitchen, Anathema hefted it up to spill the water over and Aziraphale bend his knees a little so she didn’t have to lift it up so high, to make it easier for her.

“Sure there are. I’m not going to make tea water for a sick galdori in a metal pot, though. That would be counterproductive.”

“Counterpro- oh. Oh! Oh no! I thought it was only about touching metal, directly touching it, that’s dangerous to them.”

Anathema dropped the empty bucket into the water and then pulled it up all over again.

“I don’t know if it’s dangerous,” she admitted “but if even I notice an aftertaste sometimes, it probably tastes horrible to one of them. You wouldn’t want to drink something that tastes tainted when you’re sick, would you?”

Standing there, in the kitchen, holding a wet leather bag and having, in hindsight, obvious connections explained to him by a girl that was probably a whole decade younger than him, Aziraphale felt incredibly foolish. What other obvious things had he failed to see? Had he accidentally made Crowley’s life harder than it needed to be, just by virtue of being oblivious?

Meanwhile, Anathema fetched a kettle, filled it about halfway with water, took the pouch from Aziraphale’s hands and lowered it inside the kettle, so that both containers were separated by a layer of water, then hung both kettle and pouch on a hook over one of the fireplaces, making sure the pouch’s opening stayed above the water level in the kettle. After that, there was nothing much to do for either of them than to wait for the heat to do its part.

The urge to bridge the silence battled Aziraphale’s distaste for small talk and, in the end, the urge won.

“So...you and your...teacher? Mistress Nutter?”

“She’s my grandmother.”

“Ah. You and your grandmother, do you live down in the city?”

Anathema leaned back against a counter and opened the leather tie holing her braid closed, to redo it. Her hair was thick and dark and reached to her mid back. Not only that, but, upon looking at her more closely, Aziraphale saw that all of her had a darkish hue to it. Tan skin, dark eyes, dark hair – unusual for the area.

“We live outside of Tadfield.”

“Tadfield? That does sound familiar, but I can't quite put finger on it...”

“It's about halfway between here and Shoreham-by-the-sea.”

Shoreham-by-the-sea was the largest port town in Sulvany, and often provided Bluharbor with goods from further inland.

“Oh my, that's, what, four, five hours away? I suppose we're lucky that you two happened to be in the area.”

Still braiding, Anathema looked over at him, making eye contact for the first time.

“We didn't 'happen' to be in the area, Agnes saw that she was needed here.”

Aziraphale's brow furrowed.

“I'm afraid I can't follow...?”

“Agnes can see the future. She's a witch, you know, and she's teaching me to be one, too.”

“A w- A witch?”

He turned, scanning the area around them for any nosy servants who might be listening in, and found everyone busy.

“A real witch?” he asked, quietly, stepping closer to her. “Who knows real magic?”

A proud grin spread on Anathema's face.

“As real as they come.”

\- - -

Over in the west wing, Agnes entered Crowley's room for the second time. The air was thick and foul with the combined smells of blood, something rotten and Crowley's bile that had only partially made it into the chamber pot. Crowley herself half sat, half lay on the bed, wrapped in a bloody blanket and curled in on herself. She eyed the entering woman suspiciously.

“Go away.”

Agnes set her bag down on the floor.

“No.”

Instead, she picked up the pot and handed it out to someone in the hallway, before closing the door again and then rummaging in her bag. After a while, she pulled out a little cone, wrapped in cloth, about half as high as her littlest finger was long, and a thing Crowley didn't recognize.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard you people have very sensitive noses. I'd like to light this, if you don't mind. It doesn't do anything, it just smells nice.”

Crowley didn't answer, only observed the stranger. Said stranger held the little cone out in her direction on her flat palm, close enough for Crowley to get a whiff if she so desired. It smelled faintly of resin and earth. She moved her shoulder in a way that could have been interpreted as either a twitch or a shrug.

The woman used the unknown instrument to strike a spark over the cone, setting it on fire and then blowing on it until the flame died and left a gently billowing smoke in its wake. It did indeed make the room smell a lot more tolerable almost immediately.

The woman pulled the chair so she could sit right in front of the bed, on eye level with Crowley.

“My name is Agnes Nutter, I'm here to help you. Would you like to tell me your name?”

Crowley squinted and pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

“That's fine, you don't have to.”

Agnes paused for a second, regarding her thoughtfully.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Like I said, I’m here to help. I could make some tea with lady’s mantle and shepherd's purse for you, that generally helps with the cramps and the bleeding – but that would only be a short term solution. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to ask you some questions so we can find a long term treatment together. You can just nod or shake your head, you don’t have to speak.”

When Crowley gave no answer, Agnes frowned.

“You do understand me, right?”

Hesitation, then a little nod.

“Good. Are you in pain?”

A nod, again. Agnes put her right hand on her own lower belly, below the navel.

“Here?”

Nod.

“Anywhere else?”

Crowley pointed at her head.

“Figures. Does the light make it worse? Would you like me to close the curtains?”

After deliberating for a second, Crowley nodded again. Agnes closed the curtain, returned, and then pulled a little wooden box, slightly taller than a hand width and about two lengths of that same hand wide, from her bag. Upon being opened, the box revealed about a dozen tiny compartments, each filled with some sort of herb or plant.

“Are you nauseous? I have some storkwort here, most people find that it helps with that. You’d just take one of the leaves, put it in your mouth,” she demonstrated it while she explained, “then bite, once or twice. It tastes sour and a bit sharp. Do you want one?”

Carefully, Agnes put one of the leaves on her flat palm and held it out for Crowley to take or deny. Crowley did indeed still feel nauseous, and the Nutter woman chewing on a leave herself eased her suspicions a little, so she slowly, slowly, always keeping her eyes on the other, took the offering and put it in her mouth as instructed. As soon as she bit down, the unexpectedly intense sour flavour flooded her tongue. It wasn’t bad, only surprising. Once she got over the initial shock, Crowley moved the leave to the other side of her mouth and bit down again. Whether or not it helped with the nausea, she couldn’t tell yet, but it definitely drove the sickening remnants of bile from her tongue, so that was a relief.

Agnes smiled at her. “See? That’s better, isn’t it?”

It sure was.

“Is this your first bleeding?”

A slow shake of the head.

“Is it always like this?”

Thinking back, Crowley shook her head again. Then, quietly, almost in a whisper, she added. “They’re always bad, though.”

“Mh-hm. How do you usually deal with them?”

“By not having a quim.”

Agnes frowned in confusion, but not for the reason Crowley expected.

“Then why do you have one now? Did the bleeding start early this month?”

Because of the pain and dizzy fog in her brain, it took Crowley a moment to understand _that_ the reaction surprised her, then another moment to understand _why._ That human either knew more about the workings of her body than the ones she’d met so far, or she was better at playing it off. Pulling up the sleeve of her nightgown and staining it red with her bloody fingers, Crowley presented the bindings beneath. “Can’t change it.”

Agnes made to grab her wrist, but stopped herself to ask for permission. When she got it, reluctantly, she gently took Crowley’s forearm in her hand (it was warm and strong and slightly calloused) to inspect the bands more closely. Unexpectedly, she actually looked angry.

“Did someone here do this to you?”

“No.”

Carefully putting the arm down again, but still holding on to it, Agnes huffed, clearly unhappy.

“I’d like to feel your stomach, to get a better picture. Just like this,” she carefully pressed the tips of her fingers onto the skin of the arm she still held. “Just to feel for swelling or hardness. May I?”

“But it hurts...”

“I know. I know it hurts, so I’d make sure to be very gentle and stop the second you tell me to.”

Agnes had been friendly and helpful so far, but Crowley was still scared.

“...promise?”

“I promise. I only need one hand, so you could hold the other, if that would make you feel better. You could pinch me if I’m too rough.”

Finally, Crowley agreed and let Agnes maneuver her into a more horizontal position. The examination began with very light, barely there touches, just to get her used to the feeling, and slowly progressed into more firm palpations. It was uncomfortable, yes, but negligible compared to the cramps themselves. After a few minutes, Agnes spoke up again.

“You’re awfully thin. Were you sick?”

“No...”

“Do they not feed you here?”

“Their food tastes like death.”

“Hm...”

Just then there was a knock on the door. Agnes covered Crowley with her blanket and, after shooting her a quick glance to see if she protested, called for the person on the other side to come in.

Anathema and Aziraphale entered, both carrying two clay jugs with steaming hot water inside. Agnes immediately took one of them, setting it beside the bed and started picking ingredients out of her little box, showing each to Crowley and explaining what they were and did before wrapping them in a thin piece of cloth.

“This is here shepherd’s purse – remember, I said it helps with the bleeding? This is green shoregazer, it’ll relax your muscles, so the cramps stop and you can go to sleep. This spongy stuff is livermoss, it tastes a bit bitter, so look out for that, but it helps your body replace the lost blood. We’ll let this steep for a few minutes, then I need you to drink about a cup of it right away and the rest over the course of an hour. Will you do that for me?”

Crowley performed a half nod-, half shrug-like motion, still unsure but not outright denying anything. After tying her little herb bundle off tightly and dropping it in the pitcher to soak, Agnes got up and turned to address Aziraphale.

“I’ll be taking this, thank you.” she said, taking one of the pitchers from him. “Do you have some clean bedding around here, somewhere? No use cleaning her up to let her lay in the mess again, is it?”

“Hm? Uh, yes. Yes. I’ll, uh...yes. Is she- Is Crowley going to be alright?”

Aziraphale peeked around Agnes to search for Crowley’s eyes, worry scrunching up his pretty face.

“Are you alright?”

Weakly rolling her eyes at the sweet, compassionate dumb ass, Crowley snorted.

“Yep...bleedin’ to death ‘cause of my broken cunt, but I’m great.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Agnes interjected, as loud as Crowley’s headache allowed, then went to pick up the mug beside the washing bowl and jug on the bedside table to pour the first serving of brew for her patient. “You’re neither broken nor bleeding to death. In a terrible condition, yes, but nothing I can’t work with. Drink this-” she handed over the mug. “we’ll clean you up, you’ll get some good rest and then I will have to have some words with certain people. Medicine can only do so much, you also need to gain some weight, some muscle, get some fresh air, let the sun shine on your skin. Medicine, food, exercise, that’s what you need!”

While she spoke, she held the mug up so Crowley could first dubiously sniff the concoction she’d made, then take small, careful sips from it. On the other side of the room, Aziraphale needed a few tries to find the courage to speak up again.

“Medicine, food, exercise, and…a-and magic, perhaps?”

A touch of a smile flitted across Agnes’ face before she schooled her features again.

“Magic?”

Aziraphale stepped closer.

“Anathema said you’re a witch. A real witch who knows real magic. Is that true?”

“I suppose that depends on what you consider real magic.”

He stopped and exchanged a glance with Crowley, who’d perked up.

“Can you...” he bit his lip. “You obviously know about galdori. Do you know enough to- to _undo_ their magic?”

That last sentence had been a whisper, accompanied by a nervous look at the door.

Agnes did not answer at first, instead urging Crowley to drink up. It took a few minutes, during which Anathema placated the Prince with a gesture that said _patience. Give it time._

Once the mug was empty, she sat back and turned, so that she could address everyone without having her back towards them.

“I have knowledge of them – met two or three when I was still a girl.” _A pause, just the slightest hesitation._ “My son also taught me quite a bit. He got to study them. I’m guessing you’re talking about the...” she pointed at Crowley and mimed a circle around her forearm, looking at both of them – and receiving hurried nods from each – in turn.

“Those, I’m not familiar with, so I can’t make any promises. I could try...”

She drifted off, following the smoke from the incense cone with her gaze, clearly deep in thought.

“I could try something. It wouldn’t be the intended method, but it might work…”

“And what would you want in return?” Aziraphale asked, to which she waved him away.

“Don’t worry about that.” Then, turning towards Crowley again. “How do you feel? Ready to get out of those soiled clothes, wash up a little?”

Aziraphale interrupted before she could answer.

“No one can know about it.”

Agnes huffed through her nose, neither really amused nor really annoyed, just a bit of either.

“Yes, I thought as much, what with all the whispering and such. Anything else before you go fetch some clean bedding?”

“Um, actually...” he said, hesitantly, looking down and wringing his hands. “That son of yours...is it possible to speak with him? Where does he live?”

“He doesn’t.”

A moment of silence, then-

“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t be, it’s not your fault.”

With that, Aziraphale left the room in search for fresh sheets. He ran into Newt, who’d been ‘standing guard’ (waiting and talking with the actual guards) the entire time and discussed where to find the necessary items with him. Just when they were both about to part and collect what they needed, the door opened again and Anathema stepped out.

“You!” she demanded, pointing at Aziraphale.

“...yes?”

She put her hands on her slim hips.

“Uncle Adam wrote a book about his studies. Would you be interested in that?”

“A book? A book! Goodness, yes, yes I would! Could I borrow it from you? Or buy it? Just name your prize, I’ll buy it!”

“No.”

Beside them, Newt was very confused.

Anathema continued. ”I asked grandma, though, and she said that I could copy it, if I want, and that I could do what I want with that copy.”

“Oh, er...and what would you want to do with it?”

She put on a mock frown, pretending to be deep in thought.

“I don’t know, yet...Maybe I’ll think of something I would like to trade it for.”

“Well, in that case...let me know once you do. Please.”

She smiled, nodded, then went back inside, only to poke her head out of the room again.

“Don’t forget to get a new mattress as well, the old one’s soaked through.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, guys! We cracked ONE HUNDRED kudos! I'm so, so, SO excited! I know it's probably not that much for some of you, but it's a big deal for me! One hundred people took the time to click the little button at the end of the chapter :D! On my first fic ever! I didn't really want to say anything on the last chapter, because it didn't matter, but I had a job interview last week and got the rejection the day of the upload, so I felt pretty down - then I saw that number, and I got so ridiculously excited.
> 
> I know it's kinda cheesy to say that, especially since it's "just" fanfiction, but anytime I see feedback it just makes me feel all happy and warm and fuzzy inside. Some of ya'll return every chapter and it's...we don't know each other personally, but I recognize you, so it's a bit like seeing the same people in public transit each morning? Only you take the time to say something nice? So it's that, but a dozen times better? What I'm trying to say is: Thank you! 
> 
> As always, take care of yourself, thank you for the kudos and comments, love ya <3


	12. A touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale confronts his mother. Madame Tracy confronts Crowley. Not all that much happening plot-wise, but we're tackling some feelings.
> 
> Warning: Chapter contains blood and skims over mental illness.

The entrance hall of Fellwind Palace’s main building served both as a showcase to advertise the royal affluence to visitors and as a nexus for the major paths in the building, so it was not only large, imposing and lavishly decorated but also very busy. Gilded reliefs of lions, eagles and curly haired angels mingled on the ceiling, looking down on the housekeeping staff and errand boys who scuttled over the geometrically patterned marble floor.

If anyone had asked her if she’d chosen to wait not only in the entrance hall but smack dab in the middle of it to be seen (and in the way of) as many people as possible, Agnes would have probably admitted that, yes, yes she had. She quite openly and unabashedly enjoyed the attention, greeting the one or two old, familiar faces and watching them scurry away in a hurry.

Anathema, for her part, kept busy with people-watching, currently critically scrutinizing Captain Archer, who’d _miraculously_ appeared to keep watch over them. It was obvious he felt quite uncomfortable, having a girl watching him so intently, and not in the way girls usually did. After doing his best to ignore her for a while, he finally tried to disarm her with one of his winning smiles.

“Yes?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re messed up. Your energy is messed up.”

He blinked at her, dumbfounded. “That’s...rude..? I’m sure your grandmother does not approve of you saying rude things.”

“She does if they’re true.”

The Captain looked over at Mistress Nutter, who ignored him, and then back down at the girl that barely reached up to his chest, yet seemed to have not an ounce of respect for him.

“Well...you should not be rude, despite what she says.”

“You should fix your energy.”

He did not know how to react to that.

From further in the palace, Madame Tracy descended the stairs, making a beeline for the witch and her apprentice. Once in a range that allowed them to speak relatively quietly, she pulled a little, red, velvet satchel from a pocket in her apron and attempted to hand it over.

“I have taken the liberty to arrange a generous payment for your services in Her Majesty’s name. Both the donkey and the vehicle you arrived with have been seen to. Master Sanford has received your instructions and assured me that he will copy them so everyone concerned can take the appropriate measures.

The satchel was left dangling between the women.

“Aw, I was hoping she’d at least take the time to kick me out in person.” Agnes responded, louder than necessary, making Madame Tracy cringe.

“Regrettably,” the maid said, softly “Her Majesty is quite busy, and will be for the foreseeable future.”

Agnes tilted her head, smiling and raising her eyebrows, looking amused and disbelieving. Noticing her unintentional pun, Madame Tracy shook her head, then stepped closer, took Agnes’ hand and pushed her payment into it.

“Do. Not. Make a scene. Please. Not for your or mine or Her Majesty’s sake, but for him. You were needed, you did the right thing, and she’s grateful, in her own way; now please do the right thing again.”

Still smiling, Agnes finally accepted the payment and put it away in her own pocket. When she answered this time, she matched the other woman’s volume.

“Don’t worry, Marjorie. I will.”

\- - -

Life went on.

Master Sanford prepared a medicinal concoction for Crowley according to Mistress Nutter’s instructions, to be taken each morning and evening. The kitchen staff received a short briefing on how not to kill the ‘guest’. Newt took care of his duties as he had before.

Aziraphale ate alone.

It was a regular occurrence, on days with council meetings, for Her Majesty to take her mid-day meal in her own chambers afterwards, as the meetings were prone to dragging on, so nothing unusual there. One lonely dinner was no reason to worry, either. It was well within his mother’s rights to retire to bed early. Breakfast on the day after was when he started to question her absence. As far as he knew, she had no unusual appointments. No trips planned. (She barely, if ever, left the palace grounds, anyway.) There was no real reason for her to skip out on the precious little time they spent in each other’s company each day…unless…

Unless she didn’t want to see him.

It happened, from time to time. He never quite knew what caused it. Sometimes she avoided people in general. Sometimes him, specifically. There really wasn’t anything he could about it. It wouldn’t do, to press her for an explanation, or force his company on her. Best to just…leave her be…

Actually? No.

Aziraphale might have been indecisive, at times, a pushover, even, but he wasn’t dumb. At least he liked to think that he wasn’t. Maybe…no, no he wasn’t! He was smart enough to recognize when he’d made a mistake and to not make it again – at least not two times in three days. He’d left Crowley be when she had clearly been unwell and she’d had to suffer the consequences of his inaction.[1] There was a good chance nothing was wrong and he worried for no reason; if that was the case, then checking up on his mother would dispel his undue restlessness. If something was wrong, then…well, then he would do something about it!

Determined, Aziraphale chugged the rest of his tea and slammed the mug on the table with more force than necessary, startling both the lone attending servant and himself.

“…sorry.”

\- - -

Shortly after breakfast (and several minutes of self-encouragement), Madame Tracy motioned for Aziraphale to enter the Queen’s chambers, before giving a quick curtsy and hurrying off to attend to other duties.

Marcella’s chambers were structured much like his own, only larger and with a few additions: first, a sitting room, with both the decadently upholstered furniture to comfortably receive up to four guests and a massive hardwood desk in front of the floor to ceiling window, not to mention a hearth big enough for a grown man to stand in. A door to the left lead to the bed chamber and the dressing room, another to her personal library, and a door to the right lead to a private bathroom.2

Currently, the only source of light in the room was the fire crackling in the hearth, as thick, dark blue, velvet curtains kept out the sun. Aziraphale’s eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dim surroundings, and when they did, he found his mother sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room, staring into the flames. She looked unusually casual, with her hair in a simple bun and a dressing gown over whatever it was she wore underneath. So lost in thought she was, she didn’t even acknowledge him when he entered.

“…erm…Hello, mother.” Aziraphale tried, unsure of how to approach the situation. Her head turned towards him, but the flickering light illuminating only one side of her face made it impossible to make out her expression from afar.

“I, uh…I wanted to see how you are feeling. I missed you at breakfast. And dinner…and lunch.”

“Ah.” Was the only response she gave.

Aziraphale tore his eyes from his mother’s face and instead watched the flames, just as she had before, letting their shifting dance and the soft cackling of the wood soothe his nerves a bit, before he continued.

“…are you perhaps cross with me?” he asked, quietly, and then added, louder, “I think I should apologize, regardless.”

When Marcella spoke, her voice was softer than usual.

“What for?”

_Everything. Everything he’d ever done and everything he was about to do._

“…my behaviour. Especially yesterday. I realized in hindsight that the way I conducted myself was…not very dignified. In front of staff and strangers, no less. I just-I…I want you to know that I’m sorry, and that I _do_ …I _try…_ ” Aziraphale choked on the last words and had to stop and just breathe a few times, lest he break out in tears and display the exact kind of undignified behaviour he tried to apologize for.

Off to his side, silk rustled on silk as Marcella rose. Aziraphale blinked profusely, trying to get rid of the excess wetness in his eyes without rubbing at them with his sleeves, like a little boy. Had this been a bad idea? Probably. He should have just minded his own business. If his mother wanted some time alone, it was literally her God-given right to have it. Barging in on her like this was unnecessary. Rude even. What right did he have to disturb her…contemplation? Rest? Whatever it was, he’d interrupted, and-

A soft hand on his cheek, gently tilting his head, stopped his thoughts.

While he had been busy fretting, his mother had moved to stand right in front of him, _in hugging-distance,_ and now gently took his face between her hands. They were warm and soft and gave off the faint smell of beeswax, yet their palms were broad and firm, stronger and more muscular than expected for someone who hadn’t had to do a day’s worth of physical labour in their life. Try as he might, Aziraphale could not remember the last time he had felt his mother’s bare hands like this. It just…wasn’t the done thing, especially for people of their rank, to share affectionate touches like these; at least not in public. But, oh, how he wished it was. It was almost embarrassing, both to realize that he had not known this was exactly what he had needed, and how much he craved it now. A simple touch, nothing more than skin on skin, for no job to be finished, no ultimate higher goal than to be felt.

Marcella moved his head to look at him, and he let her, too overwhelmed by the strength of his emotions to do anything about it, even if he wanted to. Faintly, a distant, detached part of his mind, separate from the guilt, the longing, the love and all those other horrible things, noted that they were standing eye to eye, almost the exact same height. For some reason, whenever Aziraphale thought of his mother, he thought of her as a tall presence, towering over everyone else, including him.

The shifting, orange light from the fireplace created deep, ever-moving shadows in that face he thought he knew, exaggerating details and changing lines from one second to the other. Were those brows furrowed in anger? In contemplation? In sadness? The lines around that mouth, had they always been that deep? Was that a gentle smile or a frown? The only thing he could say for certain was that her eyes watched him, intently. Her thumbs slowly, and with only the tiniest bit of pressure, traced the contours of his face.

Aziraphale swallowed hard. He made to speak, then stopped to put his own hands over hers, hoping it would make the gesture last longer, then asked, “Mother?”

Her eyes darted, from somewhere in the middle of his face, lower, then up, making contact with his. She blinked. Then her expression changed – surprise, pain, anger? – and she, too, had to swallow before speaking.

“When I look at you, I feel I might just as well look into a mirror. Every single one of these features is so familiar…as if I cut off a toe and planted it in the earth.”

How did one adequately react to a statement like that? Aziraphale certainly did not know, so he tried for the next best thing, which was dealing with the sadness in his mother’s voice.

“I, er…that’s. That’s a good thing, right? Many people would argue that’s a good thing. Now I only need your strength and your wisdom and I’ll be all set.” He said with a smile that turned out a little squashed, seeing as two sets of hands bracketed it in.

Marcella pulled back, just a hint, making Aziraphale grasp onto her just that same hint stronger.

“Ah. There it is. That proof that you’re not mine, alone. You have a kind, caring soul, my darling boy. So sensitive and precious.” While she spoke, her voice became quieter and quieter and her eyes grew distant. “What a cruel trick the gods have played, to put my face on a soul like that. I wonder who it’s meant for…”

She fell silent, after that, and so they stood, in a crude approximation of an embrace, her lost in contemplation and him holding on, not knowing what else to do. It felt so incredibly strange, not wrong, but foreign, to see the usually regal, intimidating person he thought he knew his mother to be…like this. Open and vulnerable – completely opposite of how he, and probably anyone, thought of her.

The sharp snap of a log ripping apart from the heat of the fire broke the trance she’s apparently been in, and she shook her head. Despite Aziraphale’s attempts to keep her hands were they were, she took them back, severing first their direct contact, then the space they’d shared, by stepping away and turning towards the flames. A slight adjustment of the shoulders, a lifting of the head, and she was back to how she always was, or at least close, distant and in control.

“Go now,” she said, with barely any quiver in her voice, not looking at him.

Aziraphale tried to think of something to say, something to do to save the moment, but it was over, so he shut his mouth, turned around and left.

\---

Meanwhile, Madame Tracy did her best to savour her time away from Her Gloomy Majesty. Those ‘dark days’ as she referred to them only to herself and a select few, were the most taxing part of her job. Everyday life in the palace, household chores, organization, attending to Her Majesty – all those were easy in comparison. Exhausting, sometimes, but also rewarding. The dark days, however, were draining in a different way. Very early on in this particular employment, she’d had to learn that there was very little she could do to lighten the Queen’s mood. A whole life ago, back in Leighbury, dealing with this kind of thing had been a lot easier. One of her paramours, young Baron Woolsey, had had a reputation for being impulsive and easy to arouse to both anger and joy. What most people had not known was that he’d been just as prone to melancholia, falling into a depressive state at least once a week. Back then, she’d usually treated those states with a generous helping of pick-me-up-liqueur and a thorough seeing-to, but, well…She couldn’t very well fuck and drug the Queen out of her brooding.

She allowed herself a deep sigh. Life really had been easier with that as a valid option.

Once she’d gathered everything she needed (and made a little small talk along the way), she cautiously entered the, by now familiar, guest room. To her relief, the room smelled not only not of blood, but actually kind of pleasant. The curtains were still drawn and Crowley was in her bed, though Madame Tracy could not tell if she was awake.

“Good morning,” she cooed, softly. “Time to get up.”

The bundle on the bed shifted and grumbled. Better results than the day before. Madame Tracy set everything down, then bustled around a bit to give Crowley some time to really wake up. She opened the curtains, checked the water in the wash bin, mixed the contents of the little glass bottle Master Sanford had given her with the lukewarm water she’d brought along and then finally approached the bed. The only part of the girl under the cover that was visible was the pair of golden-yellow serpent eyes.

“How are we feeling today?”

A grunt.

“Oh, that well already?”

The eyes squinted a little, angrily, and she grunted again.

“Do tell me more! I so love our conversations.”

When her attempts at intimidation obviously failed, Crowley attempted to pull the blanket over her head completely, only to be stopped.

“Nah-ah-ah! No hiding. You have medicine to take and breakfast to eat. Come on, now!”

While she spoke, she coaxed Crowley into a somewhat upright position, assessing her state as she went. The girl was still pale, but not nearly as badly as the day before. Her skin felt warmer, and dry, and there was no shivering. Upon being offered the mug to drink from, she even took it herself and held it more or less steadily.

“Whas’at?” Crowley asked, sniffing the mug’s contents dubiously.

“Some sort of mixture. Oh, don’t look at me like that, just drink it. It’s good for you.”

Eventually, she gave in, and drank with small, careful sips. Once the mug was empty, Madame Tracy took it and replaced it with a wooden bowl full of oatmeal and a spoon. At first, Crowley tried to refuse to take it, but the older woman insisted. “Just- no, just try it,” she said, holding a spoon full of the mush under her nose to smell, “it’s good. They made it in a clay dish in the oven, just for you – it hasn’t even _seen_ metal from _afar_.”

Logic didn’t seem to do any good here, though. The only thing that happened was Crowley pressing her lips shut, tightly, and waving her hand around like she was trying to shoo away an insect, more likely spilling everything than eating it. In the end, Madame Tracy gave up on doing it that way, instead pulling the chair over to the bed and setting the bowl down on it, easily within Crowley’s reach, then stepped back, away from her, to lean on the table. That seemed to help a little. At least Crowley stopped flailing.

Tracy rubbed the bridge of her nose, then up over her eyebrows, in an attempt to stave of the headache that threatened to bloom between her temples. Why had everyone decided to be difficult at the same time? Did it have something to do with the moon? It was always the moon. Or the stars. She’d have to ask Mrs. Colby for a horoscope that evening.

She sighed, looked up and saw the oatmeal still untouched.

“Crowley. _Please._ Just one spoonful.”

“Don’ wanna…”

“You are not a toddler!” Madame Tracy exclaimed, a little louder than intended, but, may the saints forgive her, her famous patience was finally running out. “You know, I do, in fact, have it on good authority that you look and bleed just like a grown woman would. So, could you – _please_ \- stop being needlessly difficult and just. Eat.”

Over on the bed, Crowley did, for all intents and purposes, in fact look like a chastised toddler, all downcast eyes, red face and wrapped in a blanket. She even chewed on her lip.

“…’s not my fault I can’t eat your stuff…”

Madame Tracy almost wanted to go and console the poor girl. Almost. She didn’t, because she knew better.

“It actually is, a bit.”

When Crowley stared at her, clearly offended, she continued, “You could have saved all of us a lot of trouble if you had just told me – or anyone, for that matter- that you can’t eat certain things. Instead of, you know. Starving.”

The offended expression morphed into one of equal parts anger and confusion, similar, but still noticeably different.

With that mini-outburst off her chest, Madame Tracy already felt better. Calmer. Calm enough to take a moment to breathe deeply and sort her thoughts. Despite everything she had just said being true, she also knew that it wasn’t really fair. The poor girl hadn’t really had the chance to learn proper social skills, had she?

“Look. I don’t know how things like that worked out with…what did you call them? The men you lived with?” Crowley did not answer, only glared, sullenly, so she just continued. “Fine, be that way. But in the future, if there’s a problem, you can _tell me._ Not just me. I’m pretty sure His Highness and the Pulsifer-boy have your best interest at heart as well. Because, believe it or not, my goal is not to make your life miserable. Quite the opposite.”

There wasn’t much else to say, after that.

Crowley didn’t know how to answer and Madame Tracy didn’t have anything to add, so they stayed quiet, each deep in their respective thoughts. After a few minutes, Crowley, very carefully, dipped a finger into the oatmeal, to smell, and, finally, try it. When that tasted alright and didn’t cause any problems, she gingerly took the bowl and ate. By then, the oatmeal was almost completely cold and had a thin film on top, but she ate. Madame Tracy remained in her spot and watched, until the bowl was empty, then went and wordlessly took it, but not before briefly and gently petting the crown of Crowley’s head. 

11The fact that she would have been ill no matter what he did was not important at that moment.[return to text]

22One of Fellwind Palace’s most outstanding features was a mechanism in the living quarters intended to hold the royal family, which allowed for water to be pumped straight from the cistern to the bathroom and then heated on the hearth, as it had been built into the wall separating the rooms so that the heat the brickwork gave off could be efficiently utilized. It made baths a whole lot easier and a lot less time consuming.[return to text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh...*insert obligatory joke about the author being a touch-starved lesbian here*
> 
> So, this chapter took a little longer than expected. At least longer than I expected. Life is...busy, right now. There's kind of a lot happening and I'm, like, not not stressed, just less stressed than I expected myself to be? I don't know, maybe 2020 just completely depleted my fucks-to-give-budget. It's december, Mariah Carrey's on the radio again, I'm gaining weight, there's gonna be fondue, soon.
> 
> I actually started a spreadsheet to keep track of the names, because this fic is already bigger than I planned when I started writing. Oops.
> 
> Anyway, as always, a big, big, biiig thank you to everyone leaving kudos and comments, they are greatly appreciated, take care of yourselves, love ya! <3


	13. A Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get a flashback chapter from Shadwell's point of view.
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains explicit violence and blood. Also, colonialism.

_It_ _was_ _summer in the borderlands._ _A sun drenched, warm evening_ _. The air_ _was_ _sweet with the smell of flowers. The trees_ _were_ _heavy with fruit._

_17 -year-old_ _Shadwell’s luggage_ _was_ _heavy as well. He_ _was_ _trudging along a game trail in the forest,_ _all alone with himself and his thoughts_ _. The moss_ _was_ _so thick, his feet s_ _u_ _nk in halfway to his ankles with every step. In the shadows of the trees, it smell_ _ed_ _like mushrooms and decomposing wood._

_The way he walked was familiar and yet - he was nervous. All the times he’d walked it before, he’d accompanied his da, his ma, any other adult...he was one of those himself, now. Old enough to walk this path by himself. Old enough to be a man. Old enough to suffer the punishment, should he be found out._ _It was unlikely enough that his parents had sent him without worrying too much; after all, the southern lords who claimed to own their land barely, if ever, left their cushy estates, and it was much easier for the soldiers not to look to at what the farmers were doing, but still...what he did was technically highly illegal. So much so that when he saw movement up ahead, Shadwell froze._

_The sun_ _was_ _still up, probably w_ _ould_ _be for another two, three hours, but its light_ _was_ _filtered and dimmed by the thick foliage above him, so_ _he wasn’t_ _sure what, exactly,_ _was_ _causing it. Maybe a deer, or a bear. Maybe a person._ _A soldier?_ _Someone he kn_ _ew_ _?_

_Remembering what his da taught him, he_ _put two fingers together and between his lips and bl_ _ew_ _, whistling three short but loud notes._

_The movement stop_ _ped_ _. Then – an answering whistle. Two notes._

_Relieved, he_ _continue_ _d_ _, a little faster now, to catch up with the other person. Soon, he_ _was_ _close enough to recognize them; it_ _was_ _Lorna, Bonny’s oldest one, who live_ _d_ _a few hours west of them. She_ _was_ _about three years older than him, which ma_ _de_ _her_ _around_ _20_ _, but also a good two heads shorter, which ma_ _de_ _her slightly below_ _average, with wispy, mouse-brown hair and a giant tooth gap she display_ _ed_ _proudly. While he approache_ _d_ _, she stem_ _med_ _her hands in her hips and grin_ _ned_ _._

“ _All alone out here, little boy?” she ask_ _ed_ _in their native language. “Where’s your ma and_ _da_ _?”_

“ _Home.”_

_He d_ _idn_ _’t stop walking once he caught up with her, and his steps cover_ _ed_ _quite a bit more ground than Lorna’s, so she ha_ _d_ _to fall into a semi-jog to keep up, but that d_ _idn’_ _t deter her._

“ _What’cha got there, boy? Did ya sneak some’a your ma’s cider? You’re way too young for that, give it here!”_

_Lorna grab_ _bed_ _at the luggage on his back and he half-heartedly slap_ _ped_ _her hand away. They d_ _idn_ _’t meet all that often, maybe four, five times a year, but whenever they d_ _id_ _, this kind of playful teasing just naturally happen_ _ed_ _. It_ _had_ _used to bother him, when he’_ _d_ _been_ _younger and she’_ _d_ _been_ _one of the ‘big kids’. Now that he_ _was_ _tall and strong enough to pick her up if he want_ _ed_ _to, it_ _wasn’t_ _half as bad as it once_ _had been_ _._

_They walk_ _ed_ _and talk_ _ed_ _,_ _still mindful of their surroundings, but_ _enjoying both the company and the opportunity to speak their own language without fear of being overheard. There_ _were_ _months of news to be shared._

_Lorna’s younger sister Kenzy and Laren, the blacksmith’s oldest son, who ha_ _d_ _been not-so-secretly seeing each other for years,_ _were_ _trying to get their parents to agree their union._

_Shadwell’s sister Sloan_ _was_ _with child; ma’_ _d_ _g_ _iven_ _him very clear instructions to trade the booze on his back for as much of the good wool as possible, so she_ _could_ _knit a warm blanket and new baby clothes._

_Old Cromwell the hunter ha_ _d_ _a broken leg and c_ _ouldn’_ _t come out himself, so Lorna’_ _d_ _agreed to take some of his leather works and try to trade them for one of those stone knives that br_ _oke_ _easily, but cut through skin like it_ _was_ _butter. She also ha_ _d_ _a whole bag of dried pipe-weed and two dozen carved, little animals with her that she hope_ _d_ _to exchange for some horse-rub. The stuff smell_ _ed_ _terrible, but it_ _was_ _pretty much the only thing that help_ _ed_ _with their_ _work_ _mare’s stiff leg any more._

_Little by little, the first offshoots of the luchd-fair_ _e_ _c_ _a_ _me into view._

_At first, they_ _were_ _few and far between, solitary birches standing scattered among the rest of the forest, their silver-white bark almost glowing amidst the browns and greens surrounding them. Then, three, four, five at a time, huddled together and occasionally growing into each other, slender trunks merging into something rivalling even mighty oaks._

_Shadwell and Lorna slow_ _ed_ _down._

_Walking between the luchd-faire mean_ _t_ _walking under the gaze of their ancestors, or so the stories sa_ _id_ _. They_ _were_ _the watchmen, named so for the eye-like patterns on the bark of every single one of them. Their story_ _was_ _told in secret, by parents and grandparents, because it_ _was_ _a story of free people fighting the conquerors and dying to protect their kin. Their souls_ _had_ _supposedly bec_ _o_ _me one with the soil and gr_ _own_ _into the trees, to forever watch over them._

_Even though it_ _was_ _forbidden, the people of the midlands still visit_ _ed_ _the luchd-faire, still sp_ _oke_ _their own justice among them and still br_ _ought_ _offerings whenever they walk_ _ed_ _among them._

_Speaking of- once the two of them_ _were_ _completely surrounded by their ancestor-trees, they both stop_ _ped_ _to submit their_ _own_ _tiny sacrifices. Lorna pull_ _ed_ _a pretty red ribbon from one of her pockets and tie_ _d_ _it around a branch; while Shadwell roll_ _ed_ _the braided leather armband he_ _was_ _wearing from his wrist and place_ _d_ _it between the roots of another birch._

_There_ _was_ _already a handful of hazelnuts there._

_They move_ _d_ _on, careful not to step on any saplings._

_Only a few minutes later, they finally reach_ _ed_ _their destination: a clearing in the forest, large enough to comfortably hold a tiny market in, which_ _was_ _exactly what_ _was_ _happening now. Twenty, maybe thirty people, familiar and unfamiliar, humans and galdori, mingle_ _d_ _on the clearing, trading otherwise hard to obtain wares._

_These markets were one of the many forbidden traditions Shadwell’s people held onto, now more than ever. When one doesn’t own the livestock they keep of the fields they till, they have to be resourceful to get by._

_Some of the tension melted out of Shadwell just from hearing the excited chatter around him._ _Most people here could only speak one language fluently, so the majority the conversations consisted of either Taeng or Sloghda with a bunch of words from the other language and a lot of pantomime thrown in. It worked._

“ _Hey, hey, Shadwell, look.” Lorna said, poking him in the ribs with her elbow. “Look at Dearg!”_

_He did as told, following her outstretched finger with his eyes, and_ _found_ _Dearg, a handsome young fellow who was very popular with the girls in the area, deep in conversation with one of the witchfolk._

_They were one of the more obvious ones. Some of the galdori were almost indistinguishable from normal humans, save for_ _some kind of feature that always gave them away;_ _a too large mouth with too many too sharp teeth, inhuman eyes, maybe a tail. The one Dearg spoke to had all of those (except for, presumably, the tail, Shadwell couldn’t see from where he stood) and skin that looked patchy, scaly, green and unpleasantly moist._

_Dearg didn’t seem to care, though –_ _he stood closer than_ _propriety allowed, one hand on the tall, scaled stranger’s arm,_ _grinning like a besotted idiot_ _._

_Shadwell sucked some air in through his teeth. “Mmmh. That’s gonna end badly.”_

“ _Oh, come on, you sound like my da. Nothin’ wrong with bein’ friendly.”_

“ _Plenty wrong with fooling around and making changelings, though.”_

“ _Yeah, and?” Lorna intersected. “Last time I checked, Dearg didn’t have to worry about gettin’ pregnant.”_

“ _That’s not…” Shadwell began, then stopped. He did a double take. “You checked?”_

_The only answer he got was her cackling laughter as she walked away._

  
  


_\- - -_

  
  


_Luckily for Shadwell, finding the right person to trade with was relatively easy. They were one of the ones who showed up almost every year and always had pretty much the exact same items on offer._

_Entirely snow-white, from the hair to the skin and the eyes, entirely androgynous and clad in a wild assortment of colours and garments, Zepar was hard to miss. While Shadwell approached, they stood next to a sitting person who looked as if someone had taken a regular human pulled on both ends, giving them incredibly long limbs, and a neck like a stork, which allowed them to see eye to eye with Zepar, even while sitting._

_The first time he’d seen the witchfolk as a little boy, he’d been terribly scared of them – they’d looked like monsters to him! - but over time, as the novelty faded, the fear had turned into respect. So he approached the two talking figures politely and cleared his throat._

_It was always hard to tell from Zepar’s face how they felt or if they were even looking a you, but they always made up for it with expressive gestures and a much louder voice than one would expect from a figure so...spectral looking._

_They threw their arms in the air and exclaimed “Shadjumin!”_

_Shadwell grimaced a little at the pet name, but let it slide, and just took the crate off of his back._

“ _I need all the wool you can give me. You can have the whole crate, if you want.”_

_Zepar tilted their head._

“ _One? Two?”_

“ _Uh...”_

_There it was, that language barrier. Unfortunately, Shadwell didn’t speak a lot of Sloghda either._

“ _Erm...many? Much?” He held his arms in a circle to mimic holding a lot in them. The galdori did the same and looked at him._

“ _No...I need – you know, for the baby?”_

_Zepar tilted their head the other way, still making a circle. Shadwell gestured a big bulge over his stomach._

“ _Baby?”_

_That seemed to do something. Zepar clasped their hands over their mouth and gasped, then grasped Shadwell by the shoulders._

“ _Shadjumin baby?!”_

“ _What? No-”_

_Next to them, the long figure barked a laugh. Shadwell faintly remembered having seen them once or twice, but couldn’t put a name to their face. Whoever they were, once they were done laughing, they smacked Zepar over the back of the head none too gently and said something Shadwell didn’t understand before switching over to heavily accented Taeng._

“ _I always say to them, ‘Learn, I teach you’, I say, but nooo.” Fully turning to Shadwell, they continued. “You need much, yes? Much wool?”_

“ _Uh, yes. Yes, please! My sister is pregnant, see, and the baby will be here in the fall. I have,” he pulled a bottle from the crate and tilted it so that the waning light could catch in the liquid through the glass. “I have a dozen bottles of cider. Really good stuff.”_

_His words were relayed and, with a lot of back and forth and gesturing, a deal was struck. Once the finalising handshake was done and Shadwell had strapped the bag with the skeins onto his back, the person, who’d introduced themselves as Ala, produced three wooden mugs from only-the-gods-knew-where, handed one to Shadwell and one to Zepar, then took one of the bottles from the crate, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. When Zepar protested, Ala first gave them an ear full in their language, then turned to Shadwell._

“ _I translate, this is my pay, no?”_

_Before he could answer, though, the bottle was already open and the contents shared between the three of them._

“ _Now! We have to drink to the baby!”_

“ _There’s no baby, yet, though...”_

_Ala touched their own mug to each of the other ones._

“ _There’s always baby somewhere.”_

_He couldn’t argue with that. Besides, he’d gotten what he’d come for. There really was no harm in enjoying himself for a minute or two before heading home, so he shrugged and toasted to the others._

_\- - -_

_One mug turned into two, turned into three, and Shadwell really enjoyed himself quite a lot. The cider was strong and sweet and made his stomach feel warm and his limbs feel floaty. Watching his neighbours mingle with the foreigners and all of them having a good time only added to that. Next to him, Ala said something he didn’t understand. From the tone of it, it must’ve been a joke, so he laughed. Laughing felt easy._

_He was just about to take the last sip from his mug when the world suddenly tilted and he found himself on the floor._

_Movement._

_Noise._

_A scream._

_Several seconds passed before Shadwell even realized what was going on. There were horses- people on horses, dressed in dark blue and pieces of armour._

_Soldiers._

_Soldiers in the luchd-faire._

_Fuck._

_The world shifted again as someone grabbed Shadwell by the arm and hoisted him to his feet. He got pushed into someone else- Zepar, who put an arm over his chest and stepped in front of him, even though they were shorter than him- what were they doing? He wasn’t a child anymore…_

_He looked around, frantically, trying to make sense of the situation, trying to get an overview. There were three, four, five horses, each with a rider, circling the group in the middle of the clearing. The group was smaller than before. At least a third of them was gone, mostly the galdori, with only two or three remaining- they’d probably taken off into the forest. Lorna stood about two arms’ lengths away; her nose was bleeding and her chin wobbling, but she didn’t cry._

_Despite all that, Shadwell did not panic. He barely even felt scared. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the shock, but somehow the whole situation felt unreal. He watched from very far away as one of the soldiers lead his horse in front of the group – its hooves dug deep grooves into the floor – and dismounted casually. Once on the floor, he looked smaller, younger, like a boy. The leather cuirass he wore over his deep blue, puffy sleeved shirt sat awkwardly on his slim frame. The skin on his face looked red and irritated where it could be seen under the first stubbly attempt at a beard._

_He stepped forward. Pulled a longsword from a scabbard at his hip. Raised it to about shoulder height and then obviously struggled to keep it straight with just one hand, so he stabbed it into the ground beside him, then attempted to casually lean on the hilt._

“ _You people,” he started a little shakily, then cleared his throat and started again, a little louder. “You people are all criminals!”_

_A pause for dramatic effect in which the other men jeered. None of them looked to be older than twenty._

_He continued. “You all have willfully and shamelessly disobeyed the laws of not only his Majesty the King, but also my very father, the right honourable and generous Lord Marquess Nelson Gladstone! You have coagu- I mean, congregated, with nefarious intentions! You have fraternised with beasts!”_

_At that, the young Lord pulled his sword from the ground again, ripping a piece of moss about the size of a grown man’s hand lose in the process, and shakily pointed it at Zepar. The tip of the weapon came dangerously close to their nose, especially considering that the boy could barely hold it up, and Zepar backed away into Shadwell._

_Shadwell instinctively pulled them back and to the side, putting himself between them and the sword. He’d never seen what steel could do to the witchfolk first hand, but he knew enough not to be keen on doing so any time soon._

_Wrong move._

_In an instant, the Marquess’ son was on him, gripping him by the collar and screamed in his face (Shadwell noticed him standing on his toes to reach somewhere close to his height before he noticed the words being said)._

“ _How dare you?! I’ll have you whipped for your insolence! I’ll have you tied behind my horse and pull you through the dirt, you dirty savage!”_

_Without really thinking, Shadwell pushed the ruffian away from him, only to receive a slap from a chain mail clad hand in the face._

_For a moment, there was silence._

_He heard and felt nothing._

_Then, a high, ringing sound started in his left ear, followed by the rushing of his own blood._

_His face hurt. From being slapped. This boy had slapped him. This southern pansy, who he’d never seen before, who couldn’t even fill out a cuirass or hold a sword, had come into his ancestors’ sacred forest, had disrespected the luchd-faire, had threatened him and those around him...this southern pansy had slapped him._

_The pain brought Shadwell back into the moment, and everything, the shock, the pain, the fear and the anger, rushed him all at once._

_He retaliated._

_The boy’s fancy armour and title and weapon did nothing to protect him from Shadwell’s rage. Within seconds, they laid on the ground, Shadwell straddling the Lord, punching the detestable face below him._

_Over._

_And over._

_And over._

_After two or three hits, he felt more than he heard, a crunch, and the noble nose gave in._

_Around them, chaos erupted. Some people tried to stop him, some tried to stop them from stopping him. Some used the confusion to run._

_Blood on his knuckles. Blood on a Lord’s face. Blood on the ground. An offering._

_Time simultaneously stood still and raced. The rage made him mindless. The violence became a chore. A job. A duty. Carried out meticulously by an impromptu high priest._

_\- - -_

  
  


_Everything afterwards was a blur._

_Shadwell didn’t really remember what happened after someone had pulled him off of his victim, but he learned later that this whole sordid incident had started as little more than a test of courage between the younger Lord Gladstone and a few of his noble friends. Apparently, the fact that these markets happened was an open secret to the servants of the sulvanyan nobles stationed in the borderlands – it was just easier for everyone involved to leave them be and pretend to be clueless. An officer called Hales had followed the boys as soon as he’d figured out where they were headed, but he had been too late. The damage had already been done._

_Beating five kinds of shit out of a Lord was akin to signing his own death sentence. Everyone knew that._

_But._

_Hanging a young man (17! Young enough for some to argue that he was still a boy) for protecting his people’s sacred grounds? That could very quickly lead to a revolt._

_In the end, Officer Hales managed to negotiate a compromise between the Marquess and the Elder – Shadwell could live. Just not in the borderlands. He was to become a soldier._

\- - -

__

This is what the markings on the silver birches look like. They're real! And so cool!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a minute and a half, hasn't it?
> 
> To paraphrase Snoop Dogg: Merry retrospective christmas to the homies and happy retrospective chanukka to the shalomies :)  
> How are you guys? Did you make it through the holiday season unscathed?  
> December pretty much obliterated me - it's not christmas without at least one breakdown! :/  
> But, oh well, that's behind us now. Nothing else to do but work to make 2021 better than 2020.
> 
> I'll do my best to get the next chapter ready sooner.  
> Until then, as always, stay safe, take care of yourselves, love ya <3


	14. An Outing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of Crowley and Madame Tracy, as well as Aziraphale and Crowley.
> 
> Warning: Mentions a dead animal.

Being bedbound was horrible. Now more so than ever, since that weird Nutter person’s concoction managed to only alleviate her symptoms, not heal her completely; the cramps were much more tolerable, the nausea faint enough that she could actually keep a meal down and the bleeding no longer felt like her insides were trying to escape her body via her quim. Overall, a tremendous improvement. However, the reprieve from the worst of it also meant that Crowley had enough of her mental capacities at hand to be bored.

Utterly. Extraordinarily. Bored.

(The reading lessons with Aziraphale had the unintended, but very pleasant, side effect of teaching Crowley a whole slew of big, new words that could be used to more eloquently and adequately express just  _how fucking bored she was.)_

Getting out of bed wasn’t really an option for the first three days after the  _incident_ – she’d tried, more than once, and gotten way too dizzy each time, only stopping after she’d earned a nasty bruise just above her left arse cheek. Reading was out as well; the focused concentration it took to decipher the words made the headaches so much worse. The only one who came by to talk to was Madame Tracy, and she only came for the meals and to clean her. Besides, after the tongue-lashing she’d gotten from her, Crowley felt awkward initiating a conversation. 

That left Crowley alone with her thoughts. What was she supposed to do with those?  _Think_ them? Preposterous!

(Another fun, new word! Perfect for saying out loud for about half an hour straight, until it stopped making sense altogether and the guards were convinced she’d lost her marbles for good.)

If she sat up and arranged her pillows and blankets in just the right way to support her head and body without pressing on or into anything that didn’t like to be pressed at the moment, Crowley could see out of the window at an angle, that, while it didn’t show much of the outside world, perfectly captured a certain section of the wall. There was some sort of whole in the brickwork there – she had no idea if it was intentional or not – and two little, brown birds had started making a nest in it.

Crowley didn’t know what they were called, but she made a mental note to look it up as soon as possible. She had seen this kind of bird before. Back at the old house. There’d been a hole in the attic, between the wall and the roofing, big enough to put a fist through. Those birds, or, rather, birds like them, had built a nest there, and Crowley would go up and watch them, secretly, whenever Hastur and Ligur were busy. The nest had been made of twigs and straw and soft things they’d found outside and Crowley had given them a lock of her hair, just to see if they would use it. They had.

They had used her hair and made the nest red and a few weeks later, there were pretty, little eggs in there, bright blue and smooth. She’d been so fascinated by them, she couldn’t resist taking one out –  _just a second, just to see, just to feel –_ and the little birds had started attacking her, fiercely, flying in her face, pecking at her with their tiny beaks, scratching her skin with their tiny claws – until she’d dropped it –  _not on purpose! She didn’t mean to! It was an accident!_

There’d been an even tinier bird in there. Completely naked and only half formed. Dead.

She’d avoided the attic for years after that.

All she could ever do was break. Her mother had been broken and she’d inherited that. A broken person with a broken body who only ever broke, broke, broke everything. She didn’t know how to make things, or fix things or be…just…be whatever it was she needed to be. She wasn’t a human, but she also didn’t know anything about what it meant to be a galdori. She wasn’t able to free herself but she also couldn’t accept her fate.

…was it even worth it? To go on? Was there any good that could possibly come of that? Or was she just dragging out the inevitable?

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts, and soon after Madame Tracy waltzed in, with a tray in her hands and a smile on her face.

“I hope you’re hungry, dearie,” she said, beaming, as she set the tray down on the table and allowed herself a whiff of the steam rising from the meal on it. “Ahhh. So good. Pat’s making progress.”

When she looked up to see Crowley’s face, her expression faltered a little.

“You look a little red, darling – are you hot? You have to tell me if you’re feeling ill, you know, can’t have you getting a fever on top of everything else.”

Crowley turned away to hide her face and half-heartedly waved, as if to physically dispel the maid’s worry. “It’s…it’s nothing, I just…” She swallowed. Tried to find her footing again. “Who, uh…who’s Pat?”

Madame Tracy kept a close eye on Crowley, but otherwise indulged her attempt at distraction.

“Pat Colby? Works in the kitchen? About yea tall, dark hair, a bit heavy, stutters when he speaks?”

“You say that like I’m supposed to know him…”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you did. Anyway…”

While talking, Tracy had arranged the furniture in a now familiar pattern: One chair right in front of the bed, to put the tray within Crowley’s reach, one chair on the other side of the table, to stay and make sure she ate but still give her space. This time, the tray held a clay dish with a steaming hot, creamy sort of stew. It smelled vaguely fishy.

“Careful, dear, that’s still hot. I think he likes cooking for you. Finding out what works and what doesn’t. I’ve never seen that boy so excited.”

Crowley waited for Madame Tracy to retreat to her usual position before carefully dipping her spoon in the stew and taking just the tiniest sip. Not half bad. Pretty good, actually. It was salty and rich and made her belly feel warm.

She ate slowly, and in silence, in part because she wanted to savour the meal and in part because she was afraid she’d be sick again if she ate too fast. When she was about two thirds done, Madame Tracy spoke up again.

“I told you, you can tell me if something’s wrong, remember?”

Crowley froze, the spoon halfway to her mouth. Then, without looking up, she nodded.

“Is there anything to tell?”

Out of habit, Crowley shrugged and shook her head no, before stopping, putting the spoon down and really considering that question.

Was there anything to tell? Was there anything to gain, or, more importantly, to lose, by sharing her worries? The worst-case scenario if she told Madame Tracy what was going on in her mind was having those things used against her. She was already imprisoned, bound and lonely, the last thing she needed was Madame Tracy, and, by extension, the Queen, knowing what troubled her. Perhaps, though…

“Ngh, uh…Mistress Nutter said…she said I need fresh air. And exercise. You know, to get better.” Crowley hazarded an upward glance to see Madame Tracy’s reaction. She looked thoughtful.

After a few seconds of contemplative silence, Tracy spoke, in a calm and measured manner.

“Do you want to go outside, Crowley?”

“That’s not- I didn’t-“Crowley started, only to be interrupted by Madame Tracy gently shushing her.

“I know, I know. You didn’t say that, but you _implied._ The only problem is, this,” she pointed from herself to Crowley and back again, “this can only work if you talk to me, directly, not roundabout. I can’t read your mind - no one can - so you have to actually say things like ‘I want’, ‘I need’, or ‘I don’t want’. Preferably with a ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ somewhere in the sentence.”

“Don’t talk to me like that! I’m not stupid!”

“I don’t think you are.”

Madame Tracy sighed, a long, exasperated sigh from deep within her stomach, then laid her hands on the table, palms down and flat.

“Look at me.”

A few moments passed and Crowley did not, in fact, look at her, so she tried again, a little louder and with a lot more authority in her voice.

“Crowley. Look at me, please.”

When Crowley finally gave in and tilted her head up to look at her (more a sideways glance than a direct look, but that seemed to be enough) she spoke calmly but firmly.

“I do not think that you are stupid. I really don’t. I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to teach you if I did. I think you are actually quite clever, but there are some very basic, very important things you have yet to learn. I’m trying to work with you. Please work with me.”

Tense silence and eye contact followed, until, after what felt like an eternity, Madame Tracy broke out one of her signature, sweet smiles.

“How’s the stew? Do you like it?”

Crowley caught herself halfway through a shrug and forcefully aborted the motion.

“Yeah. It’s good.”

Another silence followed. Crowley ate even more slowly than usual, because she knew Madame Tracy would stay until she was finished, and she needed all the time she could get to gather her nerves. All too soon, though, her dish was empty. She watched in silence as the other woman rose from her chair. She watched in silence as she made her way around the table. She watched in silence as she picked up the tray. She watched in silence as she turned away to leave. Not knowing what else to do, Crowley reached out and grabbed her by the skirt.

Madame Tracy stopped and turned her upper body so she could look at Crowley without dragging the fabric out of her hand.

“Yes?”

“I…”

A bitter mix of pride, stubbornness, shame, and, yes, fear, squeezed Crowley’s throat shut. She tried to swallow it down, to breathe it away, to no avail. So she just sat there, feeling more and more ashamed of herself with every second that passed clutching the skirt – until Madame Tracy gently placed her hand above her own.

“It’s alright, darling,” she cooed, „take your time.”

That small, warm, plump hand was a wonderful weight on her own large and skinny one and Crowley did her best to focus on the gentle movement of that thumb-pad.

Over the knuckle of her index finger…into the valley between that and the next…up another knuckle and then back around, a circling motion, over and over. Simple and calm. The perfect rhythm to tether her breathing to. Over the knuckle – breathe in – valley, knuckle, circle, new round – breathe out. Repeat.

Slowly but surely, the tight feeling in her throat lessened, just a bit, just enough to push some words through.

“…I want to go outside, again…” Crowley whispered more than spoke, a little hoarse, just loud enough to be heard. “…please…”

The gentle movement stopped and was replaced with a firm grasp. Madame Tracy bent down a little, not enough to look into Crowley’s face, but enough to make the space they shared just a bit smaller, a bit more intimate.

“Good. Very good, Crowley, I’m proud of you. I’ll see to it that you can go outside, no problem. Can you wait until tomorrow, though? It’s a bit late for that, now.”

Just a nod. No more words.

Madame Tracy gave her hand one last, gentle squeeze, then left her alone with her thoughts and the birds.

\- - -

“You have the water?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“And the fruit?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“And the blanket?”

“Yes, Your Highness, still right here.”

Aziraphale and Newt stood in the hallway together, the Prince clutching three books, bound by string, and the squire carrying a wicker basket. Across from them were two unfamiliar faces, ‘new hires’, because, apparently, Captain Archer thought it necessary to let perfectly fine, if somewhat older, guards go in favour of new, younger ones. A terrible waste, in Aziraphale’s eyes, and rude to boot, both to the old guards who’d been let go and to him, who now had to get to get acquainted with gods-knew-how-many new faces!

Another minute or two of uncomfortable fretting, and the door opened to reveal Crowley, walking with the aid of a cane, and Madame Tracy close behind. Crowley’s red mane was gathered into a braid that hung down her back and Tracy, it seemed, tried to put some errand strands into place, but Crowley was having none of it, snarling and swatting at the older woman.

“Piss off!”

“Almost done.”

“Done enough! Get your fucking hands off me.”

“Language, dear! We made so much progress, there’s no need to act up again.”

Spotting Aziraphale, Crowley leaned towards him and away from the maid, muttering, “She’s trying to train me like a dog!”

“No. I’m trying to train you like a proper Lady.” Madame Tracy replied, her hands on her hips.

An exaggerated eye-roll from Crowley followed.

“I’m neither of those things.”

“Trust me, I know…”

Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel relieved. She was still pale and walked with a cane, yes, but at least she had some of her fire back.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, smiling.

Already a few paces ahead, Crowley answered over her shoulder, “Not dead. Now, come on.”

Actually getting outside was a bit of a hassle. They had to stop twice, so Crowley could lean on a wall and let the dizziness pass, but she resolutely refused to let either of the men support her. Aziraphale felt reminded of foals; long-legged and unsteady but stubborn and eager. When they finally made it outside, the late morning sun greeted them warmly. The garden became more and more green and lush every day, now, and there were even some birds, singing.

They made their way to one of the benches and Newt spread the blanket from his basket for the royals to sit on and put the basket itself in between.

Crowley sat down and peered into the wicker container, suspiciously.

“What’s all this for?”

“Ah, well, “ Aziraphale started, next to her, “I’ve been told you’re not fully recovered, yet, so I figured we would probably want to sit down, but the benches tend to be dreadfully chilly this time of year, that’s why I made sure to bring a blanket. Then, I thought, well, I’m not sure how long you want to stay outdoors – I don’t have any other obligations today, you see, at least none that could not be rescheduled, so whenever we go back inside is mostly up to you – and what if either of us gets peckish? So I got us something to nibble on – Newt, too, if he wants – “

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

“ – and I wasn’t sure whether you prefer sweet or savoury things, so there’s some cheese, some bread, fruit, some water…”

Aziraphale trailed off when he looked up and saw Crowley staring at him, wide-eyed and surprised. A terrible heat bloomed on his cheeks and travelled all across his face when he realized he’d been prattling on and on, again.

“I overdid it, didn’t I? I’m sorry…”

“What?” Crowley asked, then turned her head away, quickly. “N-No…It’s…This is…”

He couldn’t see her expression like this, but he could see her hands, tightening around the cane, and hear the deep breath she took.

“Thank you.”

“…excuse me?”

She snapped her head back around, though still not making eye-contact.

“I said ‘thank you’, you deaf twat!”

“Oh.” For some reason, the heat in his face only got worse. “You’re welcome.”

They stayed silent for a while after that, each enjoying the sun on their skin and the gentle symphony of the world around them. A soft breeze rustling in the sparse foliage. The song of spring birds. The ever present murmur of the ocean, faint, but there.

Newton found a trail of ants in the grass and kept himself busy by watching the tireless insects while never straying too far from the bench. All in all, the situation felt very peaceful; it put Aziraphale at ease, made him more relaxed than he’d been in a while.

After some time, he wasn’t sure how long, Aziraphale felt a nudge on his arm. He opened his eyes, saw that it was Crowley’s hand, then followed it when she used it to point to a hedge off to his right.

“What are those?”

Several small, brown birds excitedly jumped and chirped in the branches of the hedge, playing, fighting and wooing each other.

“Those are birds.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again and then regarded him with a tight-lipped look.

“Very funny. What are they called?”

Grinning just a little, Aziraphale observed the little birds again.

“I believe those are sparrows…oh, that reminds me.”

He picked up the bundle he’d laid on the bench beside him and gingerly undid the string, then gently ran his hand over the smooth leather cover of the topmost book.

“Talking about things in the garden and what they are called…I thought it might be interesting to read about the plants that grow here – to make practising a bit more fun, you see, with life demonstrations…”

Aziraphale took the first tome and handed it over to Crowley, who took it, and put it down in her lap.

“We’ve looked at this one before, remember? The guide on plants? Now, this, “he held the second book up, “this is about local insects and other tiny creatures. It might be a bit early in the year for this, though. What do you say?”

Beside him, Crowley had opened the first book and frowned down at the pages with a pained expression, before shutting it and handing it back, shaking her head. Aziraphale didn’t even need to ask why, because she answered his questioning look with a finger to her temple.

“It hurts my head…”

“Oh.”

He took it and absentmindedly ran his fingers over the stamped-in lettering on the cover.

“Shame. Perhaps another time, then.”

As soon as those words left his mouth, Aziraphale realised he had no idea whether or not that was actually possible. At this very moment, Mistress Nutter was out there, doing…witch…things, with the intent of freeing Crowley from her bindings. He had no idea how long it would take - maybe days, maybe months – but there was a plan, however low or high the chances of it working were, to free Crowley. From him.

He’d agreed to it, hell, he’d even agreed to Mistress Nutter without knowing what prize she wanted for her services, but the thought of Crowley leaving still stung a little. In less than a month, he’d come to look forward to spending time with her. She was smart and temperamental and didn’t pull her punches around him, but she’d never been mean…he really quite enjoyed her company…

“You can read if you want, I don’t care.” She said, taking him out of his thoughts.

Even though it tempted him, he shook his head.

“Oh no, that would be terribly rude, wouldn’t it? To read while you can’t. Physically.”

From across from them, sitting back on his haunches in the grass, Newt piped up.

“You could read out loud.” He seemed to realise that he, himself, had spoken out loud only a few seconds later, when he added, “Your Highness.” Then, standing up again, he continued. “My mum used to read for the farmers and their children all the time. We would all gather ‘round in the temple and she’d read stories, a few pages at a time. It was great.”

Just the idea of reading for an audience, even if it consisted of only two people, scared Aziraphale.

“Tha-, uhm…I’m not sure that’s a good idea. My performing skills are dreadful…” he said, bashfully, more to the books in his lap than the people around him.

When Crowley spoke up, her voice was quiet and maybe even a little disappointed.

“…I never had anyone read to me…”

Aziraphale looked up at her.

“Never?”

A shake of the head.

“Oh, well…” he said, before he had much time to change his mind. Something about that tone of voice tugged at his heartstrings. Some of his fondest memories were of his dear old Elspeth telling him stories until he fell asleep. Who was he, then, to deny Crowley even this pale imitation of that.

“Only if you promise not to laugh, though.”

He picked the two books up and presented them.

“Which one?”

She pointed to the third one, still in his lap.

“What about that?”

“That's...that's poetry. I only brought that for me, you probably wont like it...”

“Read it.”

“There are no pictures in it...”

“Read it.”

“It's all very symbolic...”

“Read it.”

He knew he wasn't going to win that one, so he carefully set the other books down beside him and opened the third one where he'd marked it with the ribbon attached to the spine the evening before. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat.

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Love's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.”

Aziraphale looked up, pensively, to gauge his audience's reaction. To his surprise, he found Crowley staring at him with wide, transfixed eyes. Just a few weeks before, he'd found those eyes unnerving. Unnatural. Unsettling. Now that he'd gotten used to them, he found himself appreciating their golden shine and even the fact that they blinked much less than human eyes ideally would. Having them focused on him, on his face, like he was the most interesting person in the world, was...something. Something that sent a pleasant shiver down his spine. It took an enormous effort of will to go back to reading.

“I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee

As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be;

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I

swear,

Not of itself but thee!”

Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Crowley still focused on him.

“Should I...?”

“More!”

If that was what it took to keep those eyes on him, he'd gladly do it. Aziraphale turned the page and began reading the next poem.

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same-”

“Stop! STOP, I say! Stop!”

All of them, Aziraphale, Newt and Crowley, flinched at the sudden shouting from across the garden and turned to find out what was happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyyy, we're back! Funnily enough, being back at work makes me a more productive writer :)  
> This is another more introspective one, but I'm really having fun with that slow realisation on Aziraphale's part!
> 
> Serious question: Should I put 'Slow burn' in the tags? When I started this fic I did not anticipate it becoming nearly as long as it is now...
> 
> As always, thank you sooo much for the kudos and comments, I apreciate all feedback, take care of yourself, love ya <3!!!
> 
> P.S. The poems I used were "Drink to me", by Ben Johnson, and the first few lines of "To the virgins, to Make Much of Time", by Robert Herrick


	15. An Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The source of the ominous shouting is revealed!
> 
> Content warning: Descriptions of horse-based injuries in the past.

Mr. Eydt lowered himself onto the rickety old chair in his ‘office’ and sighed heartily. The table in front of him held various writing utensils, the book in which he noted everything of importance to and about the horses, and, more pressing at the moment, his second breakfast. Mr. Eydt had always valued his meals, big or small, warm or cold, not because he was a glutton, but because he knew the pain of an empty stomach all too well. He’d solemnly sworn to himself at a young age to never go hungry again if there was anything at all he could do to prevent it, and he’d managed to keep that oath to himself for close to twenty years, now. An impressive achievement, if anyone asked him.

Every day, once the most important tasks in the stable were done, i.e. the animals checked on, watered and fed, he would wander over to the servant’s housing, where they gave out breakfast, and receive one last, freshly baked bread roll and a warm cup of milk (which maybe, _just maybe,_ contained a teensy-tiny shot of brandy).

The chair creaked and settled as Mr. Eydt’s bones did the same. He really wasn’t the youngest anymore. Maybe it was time to find a successor…He took a bite of his bread and washed it down with brandy-milk.

Couldn’t be that hard, really. Working in the palace was a lot better than any other stable he’d been employed by. They got all the resources they needed, had plenty of space, a good amount of hands compared to the number of horses – the only problem was keeping Norris at bay.

Speaking of…as soon as that thought materialized in his head, so too, seemingly at least, did Norris. The piebald menace stood right in the middle of the stable, completely unencumbered by any kind of harness or reins or ropes; just leisurely making his way outside.

“What the-?”

He got up – slowly – and moved to the back of the stable, where Norris’ box was, always leaving as much space between himself and the stallion as possible. Any other horse, he would’ve just dealt with right away, but that…beast was something else. Mr. Eydt was one hundred percent convinced that horse was evil. Gleefully so.

Accidents were bound to happen if one spent their life working with up to two thousand pounds of easily triggered flight instincts, sure. However. Norris aimed his attacks. Norris waited for the perfect opportunity to strike. Didn’t matter if anything provoked him. He’d worked with difficult horses before, but once he’d almost lost his left ear to that damn nag, he’d had to put his foot down and made it very clear that neither he nor any of his boys were ever going to come anywhere close to Norris again.

“Pulsifer! Pulsifer, are you- oh.”

Instead of the squire, the knight himself stood in the box, his back to the stable, calmly mucking. When he heard the shouting, he turned around and nodded towards the stable-master.

“Eydt.”

“Sir.”

Shadwell already made to turn back around, but Mr. Eydt stopped him. Good Lord, how he hated dealing with the northern grump.

“Your horse is making a run for it.”

Sir Shadwell leaned the pitchfork he held against the wall, slowly, then turned to fully face the rest of the stable, equally as slowly.

“Oh.” Was the only thing he said.

Mr. Eydt looked back and forth between the disappearing horse and its passive owner.

“Shouldn’t you…,” he said, gesturing towards it, “you know…bring him back?”

Shadwell considered it. Smacked his lips. Scratched his stubbly cheek.

“Reckon I should, aye.”

By then, Norris had already left the stable. The knight still didn’t move.

“Would you, _please,_ go and get your damn horse, _sir?”_

Finally, _finally,_ Shadwell got going, walking as if there wasn’t a mobile force of destruction on the loose.

The stable-master watched him leave, shaking his head. What the hell was wrong with that man? He was just about to get back to his second breakfast when he heard the unmistakeable sound of a horse crying out and hoof beats on trampled earth. He ran outside, as fast as his old legs took him, and made it just in time to see the stallion running towards the palace. His owner, all the while, was busy preparing his pipe.

“Ah, shite.” He said, absolutely flat and toneless, not even looking up “Ma horse.”

\- - -

Across from the little group, at the very edge of the garden, a horse had made its way around the side of the palace, into the sprawling park. It slowed down into a sort of playful prance around and away from the angry little man who followed it, shouting and waving his arms.

Crowley leaned over the basket, towards Aziraphale, without taking her eyes off the commotion.

“What are they doing?”

The Prince looked back at her, then flinched when he noticed their faces were just inches apart, and scooted a short distance away – as far as the bench allowed.

“Well,” he started, turning his head back and forth, “I can’t say for certain, but from the looks of it, I’d say – nothing good.”

Another man joined the little display. He walked calmly and showed no real reaction to the angry shouting aimed his way. The horse, meanwhile, seemed to enjoy its newly discovered surroundings. Crowley was no expert in horse mannerisms, but the bouncy, carefree step was a pretty obvious sign. If the beast wasn’t so scary, she might have even found it nice to watch. A huge, bulky body on itty-bitty, little feet. A velvet-soft nose on the end of a creepily long face that incidentally also housed scary, gnashing teeth – over all, a fascinatingly weird creature.

It turned around itself in a small circle, ears shifting this way and that, scanning the area. When it spotted the three of them, it stopped for a second, then shook itself from head to tail, and happily marched over.

“Oh no.” Crowley felt herself pale. Watching from afar was fine, but she’d had more than her fair share of contact with horses (maybe even that specific one? Was that the one who’d demanded scratches?) for the time being. “Oh, no, no, no, no, I’m not dealing with that!”

She eyed the way back inside, then the distance between herself and the mercilessly approaching horse; with how slow she currently was, there was no way to get back before it reached her. Nonetheless, she got up. She did not want to have that thing towering over her. Both Aziraphale and Newt got up as well, the former moving a little closer to Crowley again – close enough to either catch her if she fell or get in between her and the stallion – and the latter going to meet it halfway.

Newt reached out as he greeted the horse, overall calm, if a little tense. “What are you doing here, Norris? Are you being naughty again?”

In answer, Norris pushed his nose up into the open, waiting palm presented to him and sniffed, before nudging it aside and moving on. Without any rein or rope to grab onto, there wasn’t much Newt could do to stop him – standing in his path was a sure-fire way to get bitten or stepped on – so he stepped aside while he fumbled to get the iron chain, that had originally been intended for Crowley, untangled from his belt.

From across, closer than before, the angry man could be heard shouting: “I don’t care if it’s yours! If your nag hurts the Prince, I’ll turn it into sausages myself!”

Completely unbothered, Norris continued on. Aziraphale, valiantly as he tried to be an obstacle, might as well not have been there at all, as he was swiftly and unceremoniously pushed aside by the beast, barely managing not to land on his ass. All Crowley could do was brace herself. She pressed her eyes shut, hunched her shoulders, turned her head away and raised her cane as a last bit of protection between herself and the relentless beast.

But the dreaded contact never came.

Instead, when she dared peak to see what was going on, the relaxed (and, upon closer inspection, pretty scruffy looking) man stood in front of her, with his horse’s head over his shoulder and his arm loosely slung around it. Norris put up a bit of a playful struggle – if he wanted to get out of the hold, there was no doubt he’d manage – but stayed put. The man gave her a thourough once over, obviously stopping on the red hair, the inhuman eyes and the serpentine birthmark on her temple.

“Ye’re actin’ like he’s gonna eat ‘ya.” he said, then took a puff of his pipe.

Crowley slowly lowered the cane and straightened out again.

“So is he.”

The man exhaled and thick, grey smoke hid his features for a second, so his expression was unreadable when he nodded in Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s general direction and said “Yer Highness.”

Aziraphale, looking down on himself and delicately picking off even the tiniest specks of dirt the contact with the horse might have put on his fine vest, frowned. “Sir Shadwell, with all due respect,” he started, then looked up to better get his point across “I must insist you put more effort into the discipline – or at least, the containment – of your steed. This is the second time poor Crowley here has been accosted by him.”

“Accosted?”

“ _Accosted.”_ Aziraphale emphasized again, bristling with all the rightful indignation of a wet rat.

Crowley crossed her arms and nodded along. “Just so incredibly accosted, you wouldn’t believe.”

Shadwell just shook his head and scratched his horse along the side of the face. “He would’nae hurt anyone.”

“He has hurt plentyones.”

“Ne’er badly.” Shadwell insisted, while the angry stranger (with an almost-missing ear, not that Crowley knew about that), seeing that there wasn’t anything else he could do in this situation, went back to his own business. Taking another puff of his pipe, Shadwell then pointed to Crowley with his chin. “An’ nae her. She’s safe.”

“Yeah…No.” Crowley said. “I don’t feel safe. Opposite, actually, ‘cause it kind of feels like he has it out for me.”

Again, Shadwell shook his head. “He does’nae have it out for ye. Ye likely smell like home. He’s a northern bastard, too, just like ye, see?”

Crowley blinked, once. Twice. “A bas- ? As opposed to what? All the other horses whose parents were married?”

Behind his master, Newt could be heard snickering, then hastily, and badly, disguising it as a cough. The master himself squinted his eyes, just a fraction, and observed Crowley, again with that thorough, calculating expression. It felt like being judged. By what metric, she did not know.

“That’s a lotta bark for someone who does’nae ken their own arse from a hole in the ground.”

A dainty, royal gasp. “ _Sir SHAD_ –well!”

Ignoring it, Crowley leaned forward, still mindful of her distance to the horse. “I do ‘ken’ my own arse very well, actually. It’s right here, you know, just in case you wanna kiss it.”

“ _Crowley!_ Both of you! You- I- actually, I just realised, I’m not even certain where you two stand. In relation to each other. Rankwise…Nonetheless, you are both being incredibely uncouth right now!”

“He started it!” Crowley defended herself, pointing at the knight, then hastily taking her hand back when she felt Norris’ breath on it.

“And he ought to know better.” Aziraphale said, with a direct, meaningful look directed at Shadwell, who answered with an unnecessarily complicated kind of bow and a flourishing gesture with the hand that held the pipe.

“Ev’r so humbly beg for forgiveness, Yer Highness.”

That seemed to soothe Aziraphale, despite how theatrical it was. He straightened his vest, again, even though it was already as neat as it could be –

_That was a thing with him, wasn’t it? Always fidgeting, always straightening his clothes and arranging stuff and picking stuff…Like he couldn’t ever keep his hands still –_

-and put on a tiny, a little forced looking, smile.

“That’s fine. I forgive you. Nevertheless, this, er…” he motioned towards the horse, who’d started trying to eat the buttons off of his owners vest “situation…is still unacceptable. Please do return him to the stable and make sure he stays there this time. If nothing else, then for poor Mr. Eydt’s peace of mind.”

Newt appeared at Shadwell’s side and tried to offer him the chain he’d freed from his belt by now, but was brusquely waved away. Instead, Shadwell took the pipe between his teeth. Huffed and puffed a few times. Looked from his horse, to the Prince, to Crowley.

“Say, lass. Are ye still hurtin’?”

Crowley needed a moment to understand that, for one, he was talking to her, and, for two, what he was talking about. Then, when she did, she put her hand on her belly and took a second to really take in how her body was doing.

“Uh,y…no? Not really. Bit of a headache, bit dizzy, nothing bad. Wh-?”

Hands on her hips. Loss of contact with the ground. The world shifted. (She definitely did not make an extremely undignified squeak.)

From one moment to the next, Crowley found herself looking down on the world. Shadwell had just, without warning, grabbed and put her on Norris’ back, where she now sat, sideways. The height, paired with the little dancing steps the horse took below her made the dizziness so, so much worse and, having no other options, she lurched forward and held onto his mane for dear life.

Through the sudden, rapid beating of her heard, she heard Aziraphale and Shadwell.

“Have you lost your mind?!”

“It’s fine.”

“It is most definitely not fine! You can not even concieve of how not fine it is! Get her off your infernal beast at once!”

“It’s fiiine.”

A steady hand around her ankle. A voice in her ear.

“Ye’re nae slippin’, are ye?”

She turned her head, frantic.

“What?”

“Slippin’. Off the horse.”

Oh. Crowley did her best to focus, fight through the initial panic. Even though her seat moved a bit much for her personal tastes, she sat relatively secure.

“No, I’m not.” She said, then, carefully, slowly, her hands still in the mane, sat up a little. Only to immediately duck down again, when Norris shook his head.

It was the weirdest thing Crowley had ever experienced, sitting on another living being like that. She had not even the slightest bit of doubt that he could hold her – she’d seen two of them drag a carriage with four people, after all – but this was…he was…Crowley could feel the warmth of his skin through his coat, she could feel his back expand and contract with his breath. He was a living thing with his own mind and if he wanted to throw her off, or, somehow worse, start running with her still on him, there was absolutely nothing she could do. It was terrifying. It was… _thrilling._

The grip on her ankle tightened a little. “Ye’re safe up there. He’s nae doin’ anythin’ without me sayin’ it.”

Shadwell took a step back, let go of her ankle and spoke a little louder, so everyone could hear. “Ye want off?”

Did she? Actually…

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's this for an updating rhythm? ;)
> 
> Actually, though, I do enjoy when I manage to add a chapter roughly every week, and I think this length with around 2000 words per chapter works pretty well. What about you, though? Would you rather wait longer for longer chapters or is this 'bite-sized' storytelling working for you?
> 
> As always, thank you guys so much for the kudos and the comments (special thanks for letting me know the chapter numbering was out of whack), take care of yourselves, love ya <3


	16. A Realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azirphale comes to realize a few important things.
> 
> Content warning: Mild gaslighting

Aziraphale was painfully aware of what a peculiar sight their little procession made.

The Prince himself, carrying a stack of books and a cane, Sir Shadwell the knight plus squire and the mysterious, inhuman woman everyone in the palace had heard a rumour or other about by now, riding side…nothing, actually, since there was no saddle, on the most notorious horse of the estate. There would undoubtedly be talk about that, soon.

His discomfort at that prospect, however, was far outweighed by the sheer unadulterated excitement on Crowley’s face. To be honest, Aziraphale did not really understand how one could go from being terrified of an animal to delighted by it in a matter of seconds, virtue of nothing more than sitting on its back, but then again, if it made her happy, he wasn’t going to complain. Maybe, he thought to himself with a grim humour he wouldn’t dare practice out loud, he ought to give her a piggyback ride, see if that made her any friendlier towards him.

Aziraphale shook his head, as if to physically banish the thought, and quickened his pace so he could walk right beside Shadwell.

“Say, Sir…”

The knight tilted his head Aziraphale’s way without taking his eyes off the path ahead.

“I’ve never heard anyone call a horse a bastard before. I mean, not without them being very angry, mind you. Is that, er, is that a breed, or, oh, I don’t know, a colloquialism?”

Shadwell scratched his chin and it sounded not unlike the rasp of the stiff bristled brushes the staff in the kitchen used to clean the pots.

“…aye. Sort of. See, thems got their own kind of horse.”, he said, pointing his thumb in Crowley’s direction, indicating who he meant with “them”.

“Big. Mad. Dangerous. Ain’t no man can mount ‘em”

Aziraphale interjected. “Do you mean ‘man’ as in ‘person’? Or as in ‘human’?”

“Human. Cannae tell why, but they hate humans. Do like shaggin’ our horses, though.”

“Sir.”

“They do. And when they do, ye get bastards, like my Norris. Ain’t no better horse to be had. If ye ken how to handle ‘em.”

While he said that last part, Shadwell petted his Norris’ nose with, at least to Aziraphale, unusual fondness.

All too soon, if you asked Crowley and not soon enough, if you asked Aziraphale, the little troupe arrived back at the stable. There, Shadwell helped Crowley off the horse while the Prince and Newt stood a few paces off to the side, out of hoof-range.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but stare, just a little. At this moment, in the light of the late morning, Crowley was a vision. Her cheeks had a healthy flush, a stark contrast to the earlier pale tone of her skin. Her smile was pure and unbothered while she spoke with Shadwell. The tidy braid Madame Tracy had been so worried with had come somewhat lose, just enough for a few locks of hair to escape. Standing beside the horse and Sir Shadwell emphasized just how tall she actually was. All in all, seeing her like this, excited and a little wild, felt right, somehow, like this was where and how she was meant to be.

What a nice change of pace, Aziraphale thought, for good things to happen unexpectedly for once. If it had been any other horse, or Shadwell hadn’t been around to stop him…

…

Wait.

He looked over at Newton, who smiled contently, then back at Shadwell and Crowley. Back at Newton. When he spoke next, it was in a low tone, not a whisper, really, just a soft kind of voice that wouldn’t carry far.

“Marvellous, wouldn’t you say, Newton, what a fortunate turn of fate this proved to be?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” the boy answered, dutifully.

Aziraphale leaned towards him a little, first checking that Shadwell and Crowley were still talking, and gave what he hoped was a friendly smile.

“And would you believe, Newton, I don’t think I’ve ever, in my twenty five years of living here, heard of one of the animals making it all the way to the garden!”

Newt’s brow furrowed, confused. “Uh…yes, Your Highness. First time for everything, I guess.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” Aziraphale agreed, nodding sagely. “’Then I suppose we were lucky. I mean, not only did the animal that escaped happen to be the one horse in the stable that, apparently, has an instinctive liking to our Crowley here-“ at that, they both looked over to see Shadwell demonstrating to Crowley just where and how to correctly pet Norris “but it also happened to, coincidentally, wander into the garden, where we coincidentally happened to be. Amazing.”

Slowly but surely, Newt seemed to catch on to what Aziraphale was trying to get at. The previously confused brow gained a slightly worried tilt.

“And if _that_ wasn’t lucky enough, Sir Shadwell just happened to be, coincidentally, _serendipitously,_ around, just in time to meet us meeting his horse. Completely unrelated question, by the way, you did tell him we were going to be in the garden, right? You are, first and foremost, working for him, after all.”

Poor Newton didn’t know where to look. He cleared his throat and scratched his feet in the dust, eyes darting this way and that. When he failed to answer for several moments, Aziraphale went in for the kill. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“What? Me? What? Planned? No! What? I didn’t plan anything, Your Highness, nothing at all. I swear!”

“Oh, so he did?”

Again, the poor boy didn’t know how to react, rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but the Prince.

“He, uh…he’s not really the scheming type, though. Right?”

“Right,” Aziraphale responded, nodding. “If he was, his scheme wouldn’t be so obvious.”

Fortunately for Newton, he was saved from having to answer to that, as Crowley came over and demanded all their attention.

“Aziraphale! Aziraphale, why didn’t you tell me _riding_ those creepy fuckers is fun?”

Turning away from the squire with one last, meaningful look, Aziraphale smiled at Crowley.

“Ah, I suppose it slipped my mind. I am more of an indoor person, after all.”

It didn’t really matter what he said, because Crowley barely listened anyway.

“Did you hear what Shadwell said? He said he’ll teach me how to ride horseback!”

“Oh really? Well, isn’t that nice.”

\- - -

Later that day, late in the evening, in fact, Aziraphale sat at his desk, staring into the low fire that burned in his hearth. Thinking. Ruminating.

He had realized, to his dismay, that he didn’t really know much, barely anything even, about his mother’s military advisor. The man came from somewhere along the northern border between the midlands and that-land-he’d-recently-realized-he-knew-next-to-nothing-about. He was between-forty-five-and-sixty-years old, he’d served the Crown for anywhere-from-twenty-five-to-forty-of-those-years and had a penchant for pipe weed. Not really much to go off of if he wanted to figure out why Shadwell had arranged for them to meet. Actually, no, for him to meet Crowley.

If Shadwell wanted to meet Aziraphale’s sort-of-betrothed, he could probably do so anytime. He was part of Her Majesty’s inner circle, after all. So if he forewent the very easy, obvious way to meet her in favour of this roundabout scheme, that meant…what, exactly? Did he not want people to know? But meeting in public like that only meant that more people would potentially know!

Aziraphale slumped back in his chair and rubbed his temples. Curse Crowley! He’d been perfectly content, before she showed up, being educated in the topics that mattered to his station, and a few extraneous ones on top. Now though? Now there were questions. The unknown. Big, gaping holes of nothingness where there’d been the security of knowledge, before.

He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the desk and roughly rubbing his face in his hands. He wasn’t being fair and he knew it. Those holes weren’t Crowley’s fault. She hadn’t taken anything from him. Quite the opposite, if he was being honest. She’d actually given him knowledge, in a way, and that – that morsel of information had only served to reveal the vast swathes of nothing, the lack of knowledge that had always been there…he’d just not seen them before. Or chosen not to see them.

Whether he ought to be grateful for that or not, he wasn’t sure yet. Would his life be better or worse without that terrible gift? Would he be happier if she’d never shown up? It didn’t really matter, did it, in the end. She was here and he had to deal with it.

The stillness of the dark room, only illuminated by the moonlight that filtered in from behind him and the fire crackling in the hearth only proved to highlight the turmoil in Aziraphale’s head. He tried to distract, to calm himself, by watching the rhythmic dance of the flames, willing his mind to go blank to, perhaps, allow himself some peace, just for a while.

Deep red, orange and yellow in turn. Licking along the cragged, glowing logs of wood, licking up the stone surrounding it, up, ever further up the chimney, until a gust of wind forced the flames down, then up again. One of the larger logs split from the pressure within itself, making an impressively loud crack and an even more impressive shower of golden sparks.

Deep red, orange and yellow in turn. Warm and comforting. Dangerous. A constant struggle against the stone, the wood, the wind, itself. Securely constrained and yet the slightest oversight, just a short lapse in attention could see it spreading, causing disaster.

Deep red, orange and yellow in turn. Dancing and bouncing like dark red curls in the sunlight. Yellow embers, beautiful but almost painfully bright, like golden eyes that stared right into his soul. Enchanting and dangerous, warm and brilliant and painful and _what the fuck was he thinking about?!_

Aziraphale shot up, so fast it almost made him dizzy, and closed the distance between himself and the hearth in three long strides, took the sand-bucket that stood by its side and dumped it all on the fire.

Darkness.

For a few endless moments, before his eyes adjusted to the new lighting and his heartbeat calmed down, Aziraphale was alone in the dark, with only the afterimages of golden sparks and a rushing sound in his ears. Then, the contours of the black and white world returned and the crackling of the settling wood reached him.

What was that reaction? Why did he- he realized he was still holding the empty bucket and gingerly set it back in place. His hands, now empty, instinctively found each other. Aziraphale was at a loss. He couldn’t explain his impulsive behaviour. So the fire had reminded him of Crowley. So what? She’d been on his mind anyway, for completely innocuous reasons, no less, and the mental jump from a red fire to a redhead wasn’t really all that big. Hardly a jump, even. A step. A stumble.

So he’d thought of her in a not exactly objective way. That was, uh…Well, he was a healthy young man, for crying out loud! He was a healthy young man and she was a good looking, not quite healthy young woman…ly person? A person, who, for all intents and purposes, resembled a human woman! For most intents and purposes, at least. Therefore, it was perfectly natural for him to develop a sort of interest in her that went beyond the platonic. Yes, a perfectly ordinary reaction of his…regions, be they nether or otherwise, nothing to do with his mind or his heart. Right.

Right.

…

No.

It was no use. There was no denying, even with his impressive skills in all things denial, that he’d grown fond of Crowley. Perhaps even infatuated. He wasn’t quite smitten, not yet, and he would do his darndest not to let it come so far! Or would he? Oh, damn his confused mind twice over, and his fickle heart with it! He wasn’t even sure anymore if he wanted to be in love or not!

It would be good, great even, for his mother’s great plan. Already being in love with the person he was about to get hitched to was literally a dream come true. He hadn’t dared expect, or even hope, for that to happen and now here it (almost) was, presented to him on a silver platter! But he just _had_ to go and ruin that, didn’t he, by having his own treasonous plans. By being _soft_ and having _empathy_ and _wanting to help someone in dire need._ The worst thing was, he still felt like helping Crowley escape was the right thing- no, not the right thing, exactly, more like the not evil thing – to do.

Aziraphale slumped forward to lean on the wall over the hearth, pressing his right cheek and both hands to the masonry. The fire had burned for hours, enough time to heat the smooth stonework. It wasn’t hot, just warm, a little warmer than his skin. About as warm as a pretty face that had basked in the sun and now pressed against his cheek, as it would in a hug. Oh Lord, he felt pathetic.

Right! No. No more wallowing in self-pity. He pushed himself off the wall and went to fetch his dressing gown, to put it on over his nightshirt. If he wasn’t going to sleep anyway, he felt he might at least spend the night doing something useful – like going to the library. While there weren’t any guides on feelings and relationships and how to deal with those (if there were, he’d know them by heart by now) there were plenty of stories that contained relationships of a romantic nature. The ballad of legendary King Rudyard and his Lady Claiborne, for example. Star-crossed lovers who’d had to spend their lives apart. Or the tale of the soldier who’d fallen in love with a woman who only existed in his dreams. Those would probably provide something useful to him, some insight or new angle to approach this problem from…and if they didn’t, there would always be the diary of Sir Brian the Celibate.

Aziraphale forewent taking a candle with him, as he knew the hallways like the back of his hand, even in the dark. He hadn’t even made it twenty paces from his chambers, however, when someone stopped him.

“Halt! Who goes?” an unknown voice called from the other end of the hallway.

Aziraphale startled, then turned around to see the glow of two lanterns, and with it two guards, approaching.

“It’s just me. Aziraphale.”

Once the two were close enough for him to make out their faces, Aziraphale found that he did not recognize either of them.

“I ought to be the one to ask who goes. Who are you?”

The two, both tall, broad-shouldered men who looked anywhere from twenty five to thirty five, exchanged glances, before one of them answered. “We’re guards, Your Grace.”

“I know that,” Aziraphale responded, more than a little put out to not only be stopped, but stopped by people he didn’t even know. “I can see that you are guards but I don’t know you. What happened to Mr. Taylor and Mr. Murphy? They’re supposed to do the nightshift on this floor every other night.”

Again, the two looked at each other and the same one spoke. “I don’t know about a Mr. Taylor or Murphy, Your Grace. We’re the new nightshift now.”

“More new hires? How many people does Captain Archer intent to replace?” Aziraphale caught himself, cleared his throat and pulled the gown a little tighter. “I apologize, I didn’t mean for that to be so loud. I’ll just be on my way, then.”

Just as Aziraphale was about to turn around, one of the men, the talkative one, stepped forward, close enough to crowd him.

“You shouldn’t be about so late, Your Grace. Especially in that state.” He nodded towards the gown.

“Thank you for your concern, but I’m only going to the library. Now, if you’ll excuse me-“

“Are you perhaps sleepwalking?” the other one finally threw in.

“I, er, no. I assure you, I am wide awake-“

“So you can’t sleep?”

“No. I am awake – by choice – and on my way to the library, so if you-“

Taking another step, so he was now beside the Prince, the first guard extended his arm and hovered his hand over Aziraphale’s lower back. Not touching, not holding, but effectively threatening both.

“We’ll just escort you back to your chambers, Your Grace.”

“I don’t- I don’t want to go to my chambers. I want to go to the library. That way.”

Both of the men regarded Aziraphale with the kind of kindly, patronizing look Archer usually held for him whenever he acted ‘unprincely’.

“Yes, of course, Your Grace. Now, come along please.”

For some reason, these two strangers in uniforms that usually made him feel safe caused the opposite effect right now. They’d put him in a pincer, hovered over and around him, and treated him like he wasn’t sound of mind. He wanted out of this weird, awkward, scary situation, so he just nodded and followed along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just ( ° v °)// throw some ellipses in there. I'm just being a little piggy with the punctuation in this, just goin HAM with the italicization! 
> 
> This was so much fun to write! And we're getting close to where I thought we'd be by chapter, uh...four. Oops. 
> 
> As always, thank all of you so, so much for the feedback, the kudos and the nice comments, take care of yourselves, love ya <3


	17. A Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale confronts Captain Archer and Crowley gets a lesson

_Deep breath._

_Calm._

_He could do this._

Aziraphale stood in front of the massive door on the ground level of the east wing that lead to what used to be the guards’ lodgings, before a new building had been erected out in their ‘village’, to account for the increase in staff numbers. Nowadays the former dorm and adjacent, smaller storage rooms served both as a sort of command centre and, more importantly for Aziraphale’s purposes, Captain Gabriel Archer’s permanent residence.

Aziraphale was tired; physically, because he’d barely slept that night (again) as well as mentally tired of being treated like…like those guards had treated him the night before. Like he was a child. He was a grown traitor, for crying out loud! So he’d decided that morning, after carefully and tediously fanning the flames of his own courage for hours, to confront the Captain.

He wore his favourite clothes for confidence – the off-white silk shirt with the frilly sleeves that were terribly out of style but allowed him to keep his fingers busy in a non-obvious way, the matching waistcoat with the pick-me-up-embroidery (golden-eye-yellow), because it flattered his figure and his most well-loved deerskin breeches, the ones that already had shiny patches in the leather. The outfit wasn’t fashionable, far from it, but it was intended for comfort.

Furthermore, Aziraphale had hurried to make it to this door at the earliest polite moment, before breakfast even, to maximise his chances of intercepting the Captain alone. He was nervous enough about this confrontation without people watching.

One last, fortifying, deep breath. Shoulder squared. Head high-

And the door opened before he could even knock.

“Neagh!”

So much for being confident and eloquent… 

The Captain, as he’d been the one to open the door, looked equally as surprised to see the Prince as said Prince felt, although he caught himself rather quickly and stepped around his visitor, in a move that combined a bow and the closing of the door.

“Good morning, Your Highness. I didn’t expect to see you, never mind so early. To what do I owe the honour?”

Even with his shoulders squared, head high, Aziraphale only reached about as far as the Captain’s nose, a fact the taller man made even worse with his impeccable posture.

“Well, er, I-“Aziraphale started, then caught himself. No stammering, no flimflam! He cleared his throat and started over.

“I need to have a word with you, regarding your recent hiring decisions, and I thought it prudent to do that as soon as possible.”

“Oh. Very well.” The Captain replied with a smile that was equal parts confused and amused.

“Yes. Well. Actually, no, not well, not at all. You have let a number of trusted senior staff members go for no apparent reason and replaced them with, quite frankly rather rude, new hires and I-“

A raised finger interrupted Aziraphale’s complaint.

“They were incompetent.”

“Excuse me?”

Finger still up and now with a tone that implied he was indulging the Prince, rather than being scolded, Archer explained.

“Those men I let go. They were incompetent and lazy. We were lucky that nothing happened so far, but the fact that our foreign guest-“ it shouldn’t have been possible to wink without actually winking but the Captain pulled it off, “got lost-“ another non-wink-wink, “twice was more than enough evidence that these people were not fit to guard a tavern, let alone the royal palace. Keeping them around would have been a serious security risk.”

Aziraphale deflated a little. He had not even considered that, caught up in his own indignation as he’d been.

“Oh, well…if you put it that way, I suppose you’re right.”

“Yes, Your Grace, of course.”

“But! _But,_ that does not justify the disrespectful manner in which your new men treated me yesterday. I was on my way to the library – at a late hour, I admit, but that’s never been a problem before – and they disregarded everything I said and _herded_ me back to my room, as if a was a restless toddler!”

“With all due respect, Your Grace, you should use the night to rest.”

“With all due respect, I think I’m old enough to determine my own bedtimes!”

Despite his age and his own insistence on his maturity, Aziraphale felt anything but mature in this moment, stomping his foot and whinging about having to sleep. Part of him regretted deciding to confront Archer. He should have just swallowed his pride.

The Captain wrestled his face into something that was presumably meant to be a kind smile but ended up looking a little pained.

“I assure you, they only meant well. People just worry about you, because of your sensitive mental constitution.”

“My _what?_ ”

At least Archer had the decency to look a little uncomfortable at that, avoiding eye contact with Aziraphale.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Everybody knows that you have a…a poets soul. That you rather read made up stories than reports and rather daydream than involve yourself in politics.”

Those words were basically a confirmation of what Aziraphale had feared all along, only on a bigger scale. Those who weren’t scared of him because of the power his station held thought of him as a soft, feebleminded princeling. Or, even worse, maybe even those who were scared thought of him that way. Nothing more dangerous or pathetic than an idiot with the power to execute people.

‘ _Everybody’._

“So people think I’m weak and useless,” he said, a statement more than a question. Nonetheless, Archer answered, too fast and too loud and too insincere.

“No, Your Grace, no!”

“I, uh…” Aziraphale turned around so he wouldn’t have to pretend to believe the other man, ”I’ll just leave you to your duties then, Captain. Thank you for your time.” 

\- - -

“Sir Shadwell! Stop right there!”

Madame Tracy was just on her way to the kitchen when she spotted the crude knight in the hallway. When he stopped and turned, she strode over, all rustling skirts and furrowed brows.

“You…Sir man, you, I have a,” her right hand hovered in the vicinity of his left shoulder, unsure over whether to slap, punch or poke. In the end, she settled for vigorous poking, “I have a bone to pick with you!”

Shadwell looked down at the finger, then back up at the angry maid.

“I’m nae pickin’ anything with ye, woman.”

“Then I’ll do the picking for both of us.” She said, not only letting her finger stay where it was, but letting the others join it, so she ended up with her full hand on Shadwell’s broad shoulder.

“You and your beast have excited my, erm, my ‘wee lass’, as you would say, so much, she couldn’t keep her lunch yesterday.”

“What wee lass?”

“Crowley.”

Shadwell scoffed.

“She’s taller ‘n me.”

“But only about a third as wide!” Madame Tracy said, emphasizing the occasional word with a firm pat on Shadwell’s upper arm, letting her hand rest on his bicep after. “And that’s the problem. She already eats like a bird; I can’t have the bit that goes down coming back up.”

“Ah.” Was the only response.

“Not ‘ah’. That’s not ‘ah’. If anything, it’s ‘oh’, as in ‘oh no’, as in ‘oh no, I didn’t know that, it won’t happen again’”

Shadwell sucked on his teeth as he considered his answer.

“It’ll happen again. I’m showin’ her how to ride.”

At that, the hand on his bicep travelled lower, to the crook of his arm, where his shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal skin, and Madame Tracy bit her lip.

“So that’s true then?” He nodded.

“I thought she made that up.” He shook his head.

“I’m not sure Her Majesty will agree to that.”

“Be a real shame if she didn’t.” Shadwell replied while rubbing his chin. “I already promised. Reckon the wee lass’d be fair sad.”

This time, when Madame Tracy’s hand made contact with Shadwell’s arm it was actually more of a slap than a gentle caress.

“Oh, you horrible bully, you! I see what you’re doing!”

“Me? I’m nae doin’ anythin’.”

Madame Tracy finally took her hand back to herself and crossed her arms (which just so happened to push her bust up a little).

“I’ll see if I can convince Her Majesty, but only if you promise to be careful with Crowley.”

“Aye.”

\- - -

So it was decided that Crowley would not only resume her lessons with Aziraphale the next day but also take up additional ones with Shadwell.

While Crowley felt that she should be overjoyed at finally having official permission to do a fun thing, she found herself unable to really enjoy it. For one, she wasn’t allowed to do any actual riding in her first _riding lesson,_ as Madame Tracy insisted for some reason that she couldn’t sit on a horse’s back without the appropriate clothing (even though she’d done so before) and that meant waiting for Madame Tracy to find the Queen’s old riding habit.

For two, Aziraphale had decided that he needed to be present for some reason and while that on its own wasn’t a problem, his mood was. Crowley didn’t know why, but Aziraphale was terribly quiet, had been quiet the whole day, actually, and his overall demeanour kept seesawing from sad to angry. She couldn’t help but be affected, especially since he had the worst possible face for those kinds of feelings. Whenever he smiled, he lit up and made her feel all warm and gooey inside, like a literal ray of sunshine, but like this, all downtrodden and grumpy, there seemed to be grey, heavy clouds over his face, and, subsequently, the sky itself.

With her first lesson (which had consisted mostly of her getting used to being around the horse) over, they, meaning Aziraphale, Crowley and Newton, now stood outside, by the tiny paddock behind the stable, Shadwell smoking a few paces away and Crowley trying to come up with some way to improve Aziraphale’s mood. So far, the only thing she could think of was distracting him.

“What are those called?” she said, pointing to a batch of small, white flowers within the paddock.

Aziraphale only took a glance at them, answered “Daisies,” and went back to being quiet.

“What are they good for?”

“Nothing.”

Crowley looked to Newt for help, but all he could do was shrug, seeing as he had just as little insight into what ailed Aziraphale as she did. Sighing, Crowley leaned back against the wooden railing surrounding the paddock and looked up at the drab, whitish-grey sky. Norris immediately took that opportunity to start nibbling at her hair. Weirdo.

After trying it out again, everything pointed to Norris indeed being the only horse that liked her – the others were terrified. Shadwell had said _something, something, serpent,_ she really only ever understood half, maybe two thirds of what he said, what with the accent, but she interpreted it to mean that since horses were afraid of snakes and she was kind of snake-ish…well, the results were obvious, no matter the explanation.

She wondered, while absent-mindedly petting Norris on the nose over her shoulder, what that meant for other animals. Would cows be scared of her? Pigs? Sheep? She knew that goats weren’t – Goats!

“Do we still have time, Newt? We do, right?”

The squire startled a bit at her sudden burst of energy, but got over it quickly enough.

“I think? I mean, you have to be back for supper and His Highness,” he looked over to Aziraphale, who appeared to be staring into the middle distance, plucking a blade of grass apart into ever-smaller bits, “yeah…We have time. Why?”

Instead of answering, Crowley just started marching, stopping only to snap in Aziraphale’s face to get his attention, then motioning for him to follow. If the library hadn’t helped and distracting him was no use, then she would have to resort to goats. Surely nobody could be in a bad mood in the goat shed – it had everything! It was warm and smelled (mostly) like hay and there was…milk…and she was grasping at straws and she knew it, but she couldn’t just not try. Not when Aziraphale’s expression caused her almost physical pain.

Seeing as it was about halfway between noon and dinnertime, the palace’s backyard village was relatively quiet. Only those who worked with the animals and a few children who were too young to work were about and most of them were too busy in their own ways to pay them any mind.

Crowley may have been a bit overly enthusiastic in her blind actionism, because when she threw open the shed’s door, she scared not only the poor goat closest to it, but also the poor goat maid, who, up to that point, had been brushing one of her animals.

“Goat girl!” Crowley exclaimed, pointing at her.

“Miss Fairy!” goat girl answered, smiling from ear to ear the moment she got over her initial shock, then dropping that smile just as quickly and dropping down into a deep, awkward half-curtsy, half-kneel.

“And Your Highness! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you. Please forgive me, Your Graciousness.”

When Crowley looked back at Aziraphale, who stood behind her in the doorway, his face was even more sad and pained than before. She mentally kicked herself. Typical, really. She wanted to make something better and ended up making it worse. Classic Crowley.

“Uh, ng…Milk!” she managed to push past the lump in her throat. She turned to goat girl ( _Carrie!_ Her name was Carrie), who was still half on the floor. “Carrie, do you have some milk around here?”

The girl came back up and, still keeping her eyes mostly to the floor and doing the best to straighten her apron, answered. “I set some aside. For, y’know, for cheese.”

“Then why don’t you go get a mug? For His Graciousness?”

Carrie nodded, hurriedly, and set off to do as told. Crowley turned back around.

“Do you like goat milk? Have you tried it?” Her voice sounded a little frantic, even to herself.

“Crowley, I don’t think-“

“You’ll love it! It’s great! It’s kind of sweet and-“

“We’re keeping the poor girl from her work-“

“-and the goats are really friendly and they’re not even scared of me-“

“Why are we here, Crowley?”

“I want you to smile again!”

They both stopped talking. Aziraphale’s sombre expression gave away to confusion. (Hey, at least one step in the right direction.)

“Wha-?”

Crowley avoided his eyes and crossed her arms. For some reason, admitting that she cared, about anything, really, made her face heat up with embarrassment.

“I- uhm…Y-You’ve been…sad. All day. Don’t like that. ‘S bad.”

“Oh…I’m sorry-“

“Don’t! I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to not feel bad. I don’t know what made you, “ she freed her left hand and gestured in Aziraphale’s general direction “y’know…I actually don’t know much in general. But I know that goat milk tastes good and…it’s nice in here and I thought that would make you feel…less bad.”

When she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye after a few moments of awkward silence, the tiniest, most fragile little smile fought its way across Aziraphale’s face and his cheeks started looking a little rosy.

“Oh,” was the only thing he said. Then, after a few more seconds of looking like he was mentally someplace else, he added, “Well, in that case, uhm…thank you. I really appreciate it.”

Carrie returned with a clay mug so full of milk that it spilled with every move. She handed it over with both hands, head bowed low.

“Ah, er, thank you,” Aziraphale said, taking the mug and spilling milk all over his hands in the process, “very kind of you, thank you, um…Carrie, was it?”

She tried to nod with her head still bowed, so she ended up hitting herself in the chest with her chin.

“Carrie. I understand what you are doing and why you are doing it, but I would vastly prefer if you didn’t. Do it.”

A mousy little squeak that sounded vaguely like ‘huh?’ could be heard from Carrie’s clavicle area.

“The, uh…the bowing and the reverence. It’s fine. You greeted me and paid your respects and now it’s fine. Please.”

\- - -

They ended up spending almost an hour in the shed. It took reassurance from Aziraphale, Crowley and Newt, but in the end, Carrie relaxed almost to the point where she acted normal again.

Aziraphale did not so much cheer up as he calmed down and, after a little while, he seemed at ease. Enough, at least, for Crowley not to worry about him anymore. She gave him some space to pet the donkeys and relax and went to help Carrie brush the goats, herself.

“Y’know, I just been thinking about you today,” the maid said while cleaning out the cloven hoof of one of the older goats, “and- oh, is that why you’re here? Did’ya hear me thinkin’ about you?”

“…maybe.”

“ ‘Cause I heard all sorts’a stories, y’know, that there’s a witch about with long red hair, or, or, some evil forest spirit or something.”

“Oh, really?”

“But I told them, that’s malarkey, I said, she’s a fairy lady and she’s nice.”

So far, Crowley had simply enjoyed listening to the girl talk and maybe get a bit of a kick out of letting her belief whatever little stories she came up with, but that last part hit differently. Carrie didn’t notice Crowley stopping, though, and went on.

“See, and that’s why I been thinking about you, ‘cause, like, when my gramma told us stories with good fairies, they would, I dunno, they would give blessings to people, and such, or maybe make deals, for magic, y’know…” she trailed off and glance up at Crowley from underneath her lashes.

Once Crowley caught on, she sighed. “I don’t even…what do you want?”

Obviously happy with her verbal trap working as intended, Carrie let go of the hoof and straightened up, then pointed to a fat, black and white goat that laid in the hay just a few feet away.

“I need a blessing for my Doris. She’s due any day, see, and last year her baby came out all tangled up and it died.”

“I, ng…” on the one hand, Crowley knew she couldn’t make one lick of a difference for the animal. On the other hand, though, she really didn’t want to disappoint the girl who looked up to her with so much confidence. In the end, she settled for a compromise.

“…I’ve never blessed an animal before…”

“But can you try?”

“Yeah? Sure, I can try, but I can’t make any promises.”

Carrie beamed.

“That’s fine, cause I don’t have much to trade you with, neither!”

There was not getting around that without letting Carrie down. Crowley gingerly walked over to the pregnant goat, very aware of every human in the shed watching her, and kneeled down beside it. When she reached out, Doris raised her head and sleepily smelled her hand, but otherwise stayed how she was.

Crowley put her hand on Doris’ belly. It was taut and warm and there was movement, it felt like, just under the skin.

“I…I bless you, Doris.”

Then, because that one sentence didn’t really feel right, she added, “It’s gonna be fine.”

The only answer Doris gave was a wiggle with her stubby tail.

They left a little later, on Newt’s insistence, Aziraphale with a better mood than he came with and a belly full of milk and Crowley one attempted blessing lighter and a pair of woollen socks Carrie had knit the year before richer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm soooo sorry it took so long! I just feel like, some chapters I write 4k words in an afternoon like it's the easiest thing in the world and some chapters my brain goes "What do words be? How do I sentence?" This was one of the latter ones X( I don't even know what to think of this one...
> 
> On an unrelated note, I did some research for this story into what horses can and can't eat, and...you know, I was aware that most herbivores are opportunistic when it comes to meat. Gotta get that protein from somewhere. No problem. But...for some reason, going on a horse forum and reading "They can have things like hotdogs and hamburgers as a treat, but not too often" felt wrong. Just...the thought of a horse scarfing down a hamburger kind of upset me and I can't tell you why.
> 
> Anyway~   
> As always, a big, big, big thank you for everyone who leaves and/or left comments and kudos, you guys make me so happy, take care of yourself, love ya <3


	18. A Council

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale attends the council meeting.
> 
> Content warning: Use of an unspecified drug.

“Come again?” Her Majesty asked, her fork, and the tender piece of roast chicken on it, halfway to her mouth.

It was their first lunch together after the unusually close encounter in her sitting room only a few days ago, but it felt like they hadn’t seen each other in months. At least to Aziraphale.

“I would like to attend the coming council meeting,” he repeated, „If you don’t mind, that is.”

Aziraphale had been thinking. While the casual observer might assume that he rarely did anything but think, the casual observer would have been wrong. He spent most of his time, when he couldn’t successfully distract himself, _fretting_ and _worrying._ Very different things.

The previous evening, however, as his usual distractions had not been an option, since he didn’t want to risk running afoul of overzealous guards again, Aziraphale had decided to retire to bed early. To avoid another night spent tossing and turning, he’d asked Master Sanford for a sleeping aid. Something to calm the mind.

_Something_ had turned out to be a sweet smelling, bitter tasting tonic with the colour of dark wine. It left a lingering aftertaste in the back of his throat that couldn’t be washed away, even with actual dark wine, but it did calm him, albeit in a different manner than expected. Instead of quickly slipping away into sleep, he’d slipped into an altered state of mind first. It had felt somewhat like being drunk, with the heaviness of his limbs and the deep relaxation that overcame him, but at the same time not like being drunk at all, for his mind had been clear and focused.

All the usual thoughts and problems remained, they were just…distant. As if encased in glass. This foreign detachment from his own mind would have scared him, had he had the ability to be scared. As it stood, the tonic had prevented even his heart from speeding up.

The problem was…was there even a problem? Yes, there was. The problem was that people didn’t take him seriously, right? No. He was almost certain they’d never taken him seriously and he had just lived with it before.

Was the problem that it made him sad now? Not really. He’d always been sad. (One of those thoughts he usually repressed. _That one’s gonna smart in the morning,_ a cynical voice in his head told him.)

Aziraphale had managed to deal with the sadness for literal decades; from being a sad child to being a sad youth all the way until recently, as a sad young man. What had changed?

His company. _Aye, there’s the rub._

Before, he had dealt with the sadness by hiding away, from people above and below him, from the world in general. A vicious circle, if he was being honest – and he was, thanks to whatever Master Sanford had given him. Hiding away from a world that thought of him as weak and inept, in turn giving said world more reason to believe what it thought of him and then hiding from the results.

It had worked so far…actually, no, it hadn’t. So far, he’d been the only one to directly feel the consequences. Only, in his plan to use the lessons with Crowley as a thinly veiled excuse to hole up in his beloved library some more, he’d failed to account for the possibility that she might…care. And, against all odds, it seemed that Crowley did care, at least a little bit, thereby making his wallowing in melancholy a luxury, the price of which he was no longer willing to pay.

What to do about it, then? For all the power and importance his title held, he couldn’t order people to change their minds. He couldn’t grow taller or strike a more imposing figure. All he really had at his disposal was his mind and all he could do with that was…try. Try again. Face the music, so to speak, and get involved more, show people that he, well, that he tried. So that, maybe, gradually, at least some of them would stop looking down on him and maybe, gradually, he’d start feeling better about himself and maybe, gradually, he could find a way to make Crowley happy. Actually happy. Because (and that was another thought he wouldn’t have allowed himself to follow up on if sober) she had, somehow, in a very short time, managed to become a person he cared about a lot. Maybe even the most. Maybe even enough to endure whatever it took to see her smile.

In the present, Her Majesty schooled her features and lowered her fork again.

“I don’t. I’m just surprised. Where is this coming from?”

Aziraphale avoided her gaze and decided to go with a half-truth. (Or a third-truth? Enough of a truth not to be a lie.)

“It’s…I avoided it long enough, haven’t I? It’s high time I got more involved.”

When he looked up to gauge his mother’s reaction, he could have sworn her expression had a slightly sad quality to it, if only for a second, before it vanished into a pleased little smile.

\- - -

“…and since these meetings have lasted from anywhere between two hours and whole days, the members don’t take any other appointments at those dates,” Madame Tracy explained from behind Crowley while she did her best to straighten out and clean her red mane. Apparently, Shadwell’s darn horse had decided that Crowley’s hair was its new, favourite plaything, seeing as it had learned how to pull singular strands or even ties out of whatever braids or buns Tracy put them in in the morning, as if they were bits of hay in a net. Speaking of hay – there was another piece.

“So, what? No lessons at all? Shadwell didn’t say anything…”

Madame Tracy didn’t even need to see Crowley’s face to know she was pouting.

“You know how he is, he probably just forgot; but yes, there’ll be no poems and no horsey time for you tomorrow.”

“It’s not-“ Crowley turned her head to face the other woman, only to have it pushed back around, “it’s not _horsey time_. I’m sitting atop a great beast, learning how to bend it to my will!”

Laughing to herself at the melodramatics, Tracy put the finishing touches on the braid, securing it tightly so the hair wouldn’t tangle overnight.

“Oh really? My mistake, then. I thought you were sitting side saddle on a horsey and trying not to fall off.”

The little grumble she got as a response actually made her laugh out loud. She gave Crowley a little tickle to the neck with the end of the braid ( _“-gneah! Fuckin’ stop!”)_ and went about gathering her things to leave.

“Does that mean I’ll be stuck in here all day?” Crowley asked, clearly disappointed.

“I think so, yes. I’m sorry, dearie,” Madame Tracy answered with a sigh.

In the few weeks she’d worked with the girl so far, Tracy had learned to read her tells, both large and small, rather well. For example, the way she still sat on the little stool, brows furrowed and almost completely unmoving, except for her jaw, which clenched and unclenched – she obviously had more to say but didn’t know how and it frustrated her to no end. So far, being patient and sometimes giving her a little nudge had worked best in these situations.

“Yes?”

Crowley looked up, then down again. At Madame Tracy, at her hands, the corner to her upper right, down at her feet.

“I…,” she started, then stopped again.

Madame Tracy nudged again. “You?”

“I…don’t want to stay inside all day…,” Crowley finally managed.

“I know, darling.”

“Can’t I…? Even if I don’t have any lessons, can I maybe…go out anyway? Just a bit? An hour? I mean, Newt’s usually the one who does the actual guarding, anyway, and if Shadwell’s in the meeting, he should be free, right?”

It tugged at her heartstrings, the way Crowley had learned to actually ask for things, it really did. They’d come so far. Even so…

“It’s not about who’s with you, it’s about how many are. Your little disappearing trick with the broken window has proven that you need at least two people watching you.”

Crowley’s frown deepened and it looked like she bit the inside of her cheek.

“But I haven’t pulled anything like that in, what? Three weeks?”

“The time you were bedbound does not count towards your good behaviour.”

“Alright, fine, two weeks! Two and a half. Either way there’s-“ she pointed past Madame Tracy at the door, “two guys guarding me all the time, anyway. Can’t you just tell them to do the same thing but outside?”

Another round of rapidly looking up and down around the room until Crowley finally gathered the nerve to look right at her.

“…please?”

That was it. The pleading voice, the big, sad eyes, the fact that she’d finally learned to say please – it was too much for her poor, soft heart to handle. With another sigh, Madame Tracy gave in.

“It’s not for me to decide what the guards do, but I’ll talk to the Captain. I can’t promise anything, though.”

Crowley nodded hastily and with that, Madame Tracy left.

\- - -

The sun rose earlier with every day, now, with spring having firmly planted its foot in the door. The lingering early morning frost of the last weeks yielded to equally lingering fog over the grassy plains behind the palace. Looking out of the tall window on the north side of the council room, Aziraphale almost felt like he was floating in the clouds, above the world. The council room was excessively large, just shy of being a hall, and took up a large chunk of the uppermost floor of Fellwind Palace’s central structure. Its placement allowed for huge floor to ceiling windows on the north, east and west walls, giving an unobstructed view of the land north of the palace and the ocean on either side, respectively.

Just like in the library, paintings and busts of long dead royals adorned the walls but, unlike his favourite hiding place, the council room sported lavishly detailed decorations. The hardwood floor and the marble pillars in every corner shone almost mirror-like from their polish and chubby, curly haired angels, carved from wood and covered in gold, held up the ceiling, which itself was decorated with marble, gold and amber. Below all that splendour was the massive conference table, shaped in an oblong oval and large enough to easily accommodate a dozen people.

There were five. Six, with Aziraphale.

There was Marcella, at the head of the table, with her back to the north window, overlooking the entire room.

To her left sat Lady Michael Yeardly, her minister of justice, a precise, proud spinster in her early thirties. As far as Aziraphale knew, Lady Michael was the daughter of Duke Balthasar Yeardly, a man he’d never met personally but whose family had been close to his for centuries. If the Duke was anything like his daughter, Aziraphale didn’t even want to meet him – it wasn’t that she was mean or even rude, it was just that she was clever, wealthy and powerful and had the confidence to match.

Besides her sat Lady Uriel DaSanti, the minister of commerce and youngest regular member of the council, just two or three years older than Aziraphale. DaSantis were merchants, commoners but incredibly wealthy, so Uriel, funnily enough, fit into the council room better than those in it by birth right. Only the finest cloths and most exquisite jewellery were allowed to adorn her body, soft, cream-coloured velvet and blue lace accompanied by gold and sapphires, all of which, in turn, enhanced by the contrast with her cold eyes and dark skin. Uriel’s personality wasn’t nearly as abrasive to Aziraphale as Michael’s by virtue of being much calmer, almost detached.

Across the two ladies were the two gentlemen, Sir Shadwell to Her Majesty’s right and Lord Sandalphon Derry even further to the right. Besides being the minister of the internal Sandalphon was also an Earl and, although the Derrys technically had their seat further north, he’d made his home in Bluharbor. Of all the members of the council, Lord Sandalphon was the only one Aziraphale knew, with near certainty, who had a personal dislike against him. He still remembered the time, years ago, with him maybe nine or ten years old, when he’d accidentally bumped into the Earl. Nothing bad had happened, really, but Sandalphon had cursed him out under his breath nonetheless, calling him a ‘stupid, half-bastard idiot’.

Nowadays, Sandalphon acted as polite as could be, but his smiles never reached his eyes.

As soon as everyone was there, Aziraphale took his seat, across from his mother, with his back towards the door and Lady Uriel to his right and Lord Sandalphon to his left. Between the relevant documents and papers on the table were goblets and carafes with wine (watered down, of course, because nobody wanted a drunk council), as well as plate with assorted refreshments, pieces of bread, fruit, cheeses and cold cuts, to keep everyone content, should the meeting drag.

Aziraphale poured himself a goblet of wine but refrained from nibbling on anything, despite how tempting it was.

All of the council members had reacted with varying degrees of surprise upon seeing him at the meeting, but none of them had commented. They mostly ignored him, at first, and to be honest, he was grateful for that – he was nervous and uncomfortable enough just being there.

The topics the council needed to discuss were seemingly never-ending. Uriel went first, giving a report on the current state of the trade routes. The warmer weather had thawed most of the rivers up to the midlands, which was great, since it had also turned many of the paths and streets into muddy nightmares to traverse. Several cities had complained of their stocks in grain going worryingly empty over the winter, so a plan was devised, mostly by Uriel with the aid of Sandalphon and Her Majesty’s approval, on how to lessen the burden. Aziraphale threw in the question of how dire the situation was, to then be assured that it was nothing to worry about. The yields of the harvest the year before had been slightly below average in some areas of the country but this year’s spring already showed all signs of a good summer.

Even though Aziraphale felt woefully inadequate having to ask a question like that and then having the answer explained to him as if he had no clue whatsoever, he also felt a small spark of accomplishment at having dared to ask in the first place. It wasn’t much, not at all, but it was better than sitting there, silently, and not understanding anything. His tutors had of course taught him all about the theoretical mechanics of harvest and keeping stock and supplying the people with said stock, but knowing the theory and applying it to a very real, practical situation were two completely different beasts.

After almost two hours of discussion of trade, infrastructure and finances (and servants filling up the refreshments), it was Michael’s turn. Apparently the carpenters’ guilds of two of the largest cities in the kingdom had what had started as a dispute over the levy their members needed to pay and turned into full on hostility, complete with threats to each other’s livelihoods and tavern brawls. The conflict in and of itself was not something that would have usually required intervention from the crown, but as long as it wasn’t resolved, none of the members of either guild were allowed to work and, thanks to that, several big and small construction projects were currently on hold indefinitely.

It was subtle and it was quick, but Aziraphale could have sworn his mother rolled her eyes during Michael’s explanation. They spent almost another entire hour going over precedents and minutiae of the law before coming to a conclusion.

After that, they had a light supper, still served in the council room. Lord Sandalphon and the Ladies used the short break for private banter, Shadwell had a smoke in the corner, and Aziraphale tried to bring some more order into his notes. Despite its watered down state, the wine started having an effect on those present by the time the meeting resumed. No one was drunk, far from it, but everyone was just the slightest bit looser, a tad more relaxed.

Sandalphon droned on and on about conflicts between this and that Baron, requests from Earl such and such, newborn little nobles…at some point Aziraphale lost focus and didn’t fight too hard to regain it. That was, until a certain topic piqued his interest.

“Patriarch Haegen humbly inquires whether or not Her Majesty intends to make an appearance at this year’s Nuptiarum.”

“No.”

“Alright, I’ll just send the usual reply.”

Aziraphale perked up.

“Maybe I could go in your stead…?” he asked, hopefully, but Marcella already shot him down with an abortive gesture.

Sandalphon leaned back and joined his hands over his belly. “Speaking of His Highness and the holidays – do we have any…,” he looked over to Aziraphale, then back to Marcella, “announcements to make? I think it would do us well to take all the blessings and good omens we can.”

Her Majesty took a long sip of wine before answering.

“No, not yet.”

“We have two weeks-“

“Not. Yet. I’m not presenting her any sooner than I have to and she isn’t ready yet.”

“Will she ever be?” Uriel threw in from the side. “From what I’ve heard all signs point to her womb already being broken. Can we really risk angering her family and then not having a child to placate them with?”

Michael massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Even if she isn’t barren, I still think she should be a mistress! I understand how valuable of an asset she is, but we have to consider other matches as well.”

“You have made your opinion very clear. Repeatedly.” Her Majesty answered with a barely supressed sigh, “But my decision stands.”

“I implore you, Your Majesty, think about it again. Marquis Dunham is willing to pay a sizable dowry, the women of his family whelp like dogs and Lady Susan is _dumb as a brick._ Even Aziraphale would have no trouble handling her.”

“Hey!”

“The clever plans are all well and good but we need an heir rather sooner than later.”

“I am right here!” Aziraphale protested, loud enough to turn heads.

Michael leaned forward on the table and pointed at him with her whole hand.

“Then speak.”

Beside her, Uriel went in for a placating gesture and was promptly brushed off.

“No, no, no, if he has something to say I want to hear it. Go on, Your Highness. Speak.”

He really had not expected that. Blindsided by the sudden attention, Aziraphale stumbled a moment or two, even considered giving in and shutting up, but then (perhaps emboldened by the slightest of slight buzzes) he lifted his chin, pulled back his shoulders and spoke.

“W-well, I…First of all, I do not appreciate being spoken of like a studhorse.

Second, er…Second! While I do understand her value as a political asset, everyone here seems to forget that Crowley –that’s her name in case you weren’t aware – is also a person. A royal one at that. So I find the manner in which this council speaks of her highly inappropriate.

Third! I will not disgrace either Lady Susan, _challenged as she may be,_ or Crowley, by marrying one and taking the other as a mistress. Besides – I am not a midwife and, as far as I’m aware, nobody else in this room is, either, so any statements regarding anyone’s fertility or lack thereof made by any of us is moot. In my opinion, the best course of action right now is to wait for the treatment to take and for the midwife, who is an expert, to make an assessment. Whether that happens within the next three weeks or the next three months is…I mean – I’m twenty-five years old, for heaven’s sake, not fifty-two! There were princes and kings who married much later. If I recall correctly, King Theodorus’ first child was born when he was in his late forties.”

Aziraphale sat back and felt his face contort with a mixture of nervous energy and careful pride, forming something like a smile. That had been one of, if not the most coherent ramblings he’d ever had. Barely any fumbling or stuttering at all!

Michael, on the other hand, seemed not impressed at all.

“Ah, yes, King Theodorus,” she said, badly affecting a thoughtful frown, “I have read of him. Well, if _I_ remember correctly, he had – what was it, two? Three? Younger siblings who could have carried on his legacy in case of his untimely death. Remind me again, Your Highness: How many siblings do you have?”

The triumph Aziraphale had felt just moments ago vanished in an instant.

“…none,” he mumbled.

“I see…So, if you were to, oh, I don’t know, slip on the stairs tomorrow and crack open your skull, who would inherit your titles? Your duties?”

“Enough!”

It wasn’t a shout, Marcella’s voice wasn’t even necessarily above the normal speaking volume, but the suddenness and firmness of that command, paired with the fact that everyone’s attention had been on Aziraphale and Michael, were enough to make everyone flinch.

As soon as she had her minister’s full attention, Her Majesty put on a kind smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“It seems to me that we all need reminders today,” she said in a quiet, sickly sweet way, “so, please, my dearest minister of justice, answer me this: How many Yeardlys are there again? How many brothers and sisters do _you_ have?”

Michael did not dare meet her Queen’s eyes when she answered.

“Four, Your Majesty. Three brothers, one older than me, and a younger sister.”

“And they all received the same education you did?”

“Except for my sister, Your Majesty.”

Both the fake smile and the sweetness in Marcella’s voice dropped.

“So if I tired of your insolence I could just consult any of them for legal advice?”

It was almost fascinating to Aziraphale, in a morbid way, to watch Michaels attitude crumble as she bowed to her Queen.

“I apologize, Your Majesty, I am deeply sorry-“

“It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

Michael turned to Aziraphale and bowed again.

“Please forgive my rudeness, Your Highness.”

This was new. Having someone of high status who clearly looked down on him grovel like that. It felt dirty.

“It’s fine, I forgive you, let’s move on.”

Due to the fact that the sun still set rather early, the light pouring in through the western window had taken on a dramatic red tinge over the last half-hour, causing drastic shadows on every surface.

“Is there anything else that requires discussion today?” Her Majesty asked, earning restrained headshakes and mumbled responses.

“In that case this meeting is over. You are all dismissed.”

Everyone rose to leave but Aziraphale stayed, beckoned by his mother. He walked around the table and stood by her side while they both waited for the others to leave. Finally, once they were alone, she, too, rose and faced him.

“You mustn’t let them walk all over you like that,” she said in a sentence that sounded like one long sigh.

“I…I know, mother. I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

“No…” She raised both her hands as if to grab him by the shoulders, or maybe to hug, then let them drop again.

“You did not disappoint me. All things considered, you did well.”

Finally, Marcella placed her right hand on his cheek and lifted his face so their eyes could meet.

“It’s alright. Hm? You did well… Now go. It’s been a long day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...pretty much as soon as I say I'll try to update once a week I start going by a bi-weekly schedule... :/
> 
> In my (inadequate) defense, work has been pretty crazy pretty much all of 2021 so far. I'm, like, the lowest level grunt where I work, so my job is pretty much just making my coworker's lifes easier and, well...with everything that carried over from last year and an election coming up we're all busy as hell. Not to mention, I think we're understaffed and it would be beneficial for them and for me to actually hire me permanently, I jUsT wAnNa JoB! GIMME JOB!
> 
> Anyways...please don't be mad at me. This one's a bit longer than usual. The next chapter will be a real dramatic one so you can look forward to that.
> 
> As always, thank all of you so much for the comments and kudos, especially the returning commenters, it makes me so happy whenever I see a familiar username, take care of yourselves, love ya <3


End file.
